One day, Pam woke up and looked at herself in the mirror. She was surprised at what she saw staring back.
Pam’s every day had been consumed by a desire to lose weight. She was a mother of two and her size was understandable, but Pam wanted more for herself. She would appreciate that strangers wouldn’t ask how far along her pregnancy was, but the desire to lose weight had more to do with a desire to see herself as the person she was before she had kids. She wanted to see that the circumstances of her life, where she was a mother by the age of eighteen and married shortly thereafter, hadn’t completely erased the person that she was. She had given most of herself to her young family and losing weight was something she could do for herself. Appearance was important, but there was a quiet satisfaction in not being winded after taking the stairs. She worked hard toward her weight goals when she could carve out the time. She knew that it took slow, steady progress and she was committed to doing the work.
But one day, after she got out of bed, woke her husband and the kids, and weighed herself, Pam was shocked to see the woman staring back at her in the mirror. She had made incremental progress on her weight-loss goals, a respectable ten pounds in the month or so that she really tried. And just the day before, she told herself as she looked at her body in the full length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, that if she continued to work hard, eventually she would see the thinning in her face. But in the short span of a day, as she looked at herself in the mirror, she was the thin woman that she had decided she wanted to be. Her cheekbones were more prominent, not in a grotesque way, but in the way that made her smile bigger and brighter. She put her hands on her hips, and they felt the same as they had the day before, the same love handles, but her waist in the mirror was slim, like she had dropped four or five sizes. She turned and her butt was high and round, just like a peach. When she touched it, she could feel the sag of it.
Pam closed her eyes tight and rubbed them with both hands assuming that her mind was playing tricks on her. But when she opened them again, there she was. The Pam that she wanted to be existed in the mirror.
Her husband came into the bedroom from his shower. He wasn’t a fat man, but he wasn’t especially muscled either, and he never complained about his wife’s size.
“Do I look different?” she asked him, never taking her eyes from the mirror.
“I can tell you’re dropping some pounds,” he said to be encouraging. In truth, he hadn’t noticed any difference.
“Look in this mirror,” she said and her husband stood next to her, still bare chested with towel around his waist.
“Damn,” he said surprised. He reacted to the view of himself first. He had big pecks and abs in the mirror. Pam was equally impressed by the vision of him, and when he stopped looking at himself, he saw her as the woman that he had met in their youth. She was thin and elegant, unburdened by the years of raising a family that she had experienced.
“You see it too, don’t you?” Pam watched her husband’s expression, and then as he looked down at his own body, then at the mirror, then at her body, then back at the mirror.
“Was it like this in the bathroom mirror?” Pam thought maybe there was something wrong with the one on the bedroom door.
“I didn’t really notice,” he said as both went to the bathroom to inspect.
Pam saw the woman she wanted to be, she saw her husband just as he was but taller. Her husband saw the man that he had never worked too hard to be, and the woman that he would always love no matter how her body changed.
It happened to everyone in America. Everyone woke up that day and saw what they wanted to see in the mirror. Some people reacted with instant skepticism. Many mirrors were smashed that morning. Some people could not tear themselves away from a vision of themselves that they had always wanted to see in reality.
Pam tore herself away from the mirror to take the kids to school and to go to work. It took much longer to get to work because of the number of accidents caused by drivers distracted by the view in their mirrors. She was the only receptionist at the dentist’s office because the other had decided to stay home and stare at her best self in the mirror. Her boss had trouble performing procedures because his mirrors showed the mouths of his patients as perfect, like he wished they were, and he couldn’t keep an eye on problem areas.
The world was suddenly very different and Pam wondered if it would ever go back to normal. No one seemed to have any idea how to explain the cause of the phenomenon, so no one knew if it was permanent.
Pam wished that the vision of her ideal self was enough, and she even found herself transfixed at her home after work as the kids played in the backyard. It was almost real. As long as she stayed within the bounds of her mirror, things were exactly as she wanted them to be. But that meant spending the rest of her life starring into a mirror. And her vision in the mirror wasn’t the way that everyone else saw her. Her vision of her husband wasn’t his vision of himself.
The country descended into a tiny chaos. For the most part, society continued as everyone expected, but large pockets of the country refused to see anything other than their own personal perfection in mirrors. It wasn’t enough people to grind society to a halt, but it damaged millions of relationships and made enemies of friends. It ruined Pam’s marriage in a matter of days.
Her husband, who had never shown any particular interest in having a muscular body, was suddenly obsessed with becoming the man that he saw in the mirror. He didn’t realize that his own vision of himself changed almost daily as his subconscious found new things to improve. His perfection was very much out of reach.
“I love you just the way you are,” Pam said when her husband came in from a late night jog.
“You see this when I stand next to you in the mirror?” Her husband was sure that she saw him bigger and stronger.
Pam lied. “You’re perfect.”
But the lie didn’t work and her husband spent less of his time after work with the family and opted instead for exercise.
“I don’t like what you’re becoming.” Pam said one night they lay in bed.
He grabbed her hand and ran it over his stomach. “You can feel the abs coming in.”
“If you’re doing this for me, you have to stop. I don’t want this.” Pam cried.
“How is this different from you losing weight? I love you just the way you are.”
Pam thought about it. Maybe it was the same, but it couldn’t be because she wasn’t inspired by the delusion in the mirror. She was working toward the vision in her head. The words were different but maybe it was the same.
It wasn’t the same. Weeks passed and Pam watched her husband wasting away. He was thinner and bones protruded from his thighs and chest. But he was convinced of the vision in the mirror. When he touched himself and felt bone, he knew it was the hard muscles he saw in the mirror.
Finally, Pam had enough.
“Eat, or I’m taking the kids and we’re leaving. I can’t keep you healthy if you don’t want to be and I won’t watch you lie to yourself.”
Her husband stood inspecting himself in the mirror. He was thin and frail. He had dark circles under his eyes and she could tell that his body trembled like he couldn’t support his own weight.
“Do you hear me?!” Pam was screaming.
Her husband ignored her. The mirror was showing him exactly what he wanted to see. He didn’t notice her pack bags and leave. He didn’t move from the mirror until he collapsed into a pile.
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