Mirror, Mirror

Lisa glanced in the mirror just before she left her house for school. She was pretty happy with what she saw. She wasn’t too fat or too skinny, or too ugly or too pretty. She was just medium. Just Lisa.

She came into school and saw the popular crowd gaze disapprovingly at her outfit. Lisa was just wearing her daily jeans and t-shirt. They were wearing skin-tight, dangerously low v-neck sweaters and really short mini skirts.

Lisa couldn’t tell from the outside, but the popular crowd really had very low self-esteem. They weren’t confident with their looks and were unhappy in general.

John, an average kid, passed Lisa in the hallway. He was considering asking her on a date today but he decided he needed a few more days to practice the line. He said “Hi” and walked on.

Lisa turned around from getting her books at her locker and was surprised to see that she was standing nose-to-nose with Mindy, the popular crowd’s appointed queen.

“Oh, hi Lisa! Didn’t see you there.”

“What do you want, Mindy?”

“Oh,” she said, feigning sweetness. “We were just going to ask you something. Would you like to come to one of our sleepovers this weekend?”

This caught Lisa off-guard. “Um, sure,” she said without thinking.

“Great,” Mindy said without enthusiasm. “Tomorrow’s Friday. Come to my house after school.”

“All right.”

The next day, Lisa packed a bag and went to Mindy’s right after school. A few other popular girls were already sitting in her bedroom. “Hi Lisa,” Mindy called from the mirror. “Come on in.”

The other girls also came and sat in front of the mirror. They conducted the entire sleepover from their seats in front of the huge mirror that filled the wall of Mindy’s room. Lisa continually gazed at her reflection. Each time she saw herself, she smiled less and less. By the next day, Lisa found she had nothing to wear in her overnight bag. Sure, she had a t-shirt and new jeans, but she didn’t want to wear them anymore. She found that she had no other options and, sighing, put them on.

She went to school on Monday with a new attitude. An unhappy one. She was wearing a dangerously low v-neck sweater with a really short mini skirt. She thought she was happy, but she had really fallen into a pit of depression. Her starving self-esteem was eating her from the inside.

She standing outside with her new friends, the popular crowd. She copied their every move. She was no longer Lisa.

Lisa saw John walk down the street coming towards her. She was still listening to what Mindy was talking about.

John had decided that today would be the day he would ask Lisa out. He walked towards her and the unfamiliar posse around her. He glanced at her with her new clothes, new friends, and new attitude. Without changing pace, he averted his gaze and walked past her into the morning fog.

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