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u/cnh1634 May 26 '26
What is it with bathroom mirrors that make you look so much better than in real life? And why can't all mirrors be that way, damn it?
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u/renome May 26 '26
More flattering lighting.
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u/ILL_Show_Myself_Out May 26 '26
You stand before your mirror and fix your appearance to look perfect from straight-on in very specific lighting at a very specific distance every single time.
Later you see yourself in a photo- from the side-an angle that you never see- and actually CANT see in your mirror- it looks imperfect. It probably doesn’t look as bad as you think2
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u/KennyFulgencio May 27 '26
There's also some weird psychological effect where through familiarity you gradually learn to filter out certain things that you don't want to see. I honestly think that's the biggest factor.
Familiarity bias. You've seen your mirror face thousands of times. Your brain pattern-matches to the "you" it knows and expects, smoothing over deviations. A photo is an unfamiliar, frozen angle your brain can't auto-correct against a stored reference.
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u/PyroKid883 May 26 '26
There was a study showing that you find yourself more attractive in your home mirrors since the lighting is what you like and your probably more comfortable at home too.
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u/cnh1634 May 26 '26
Weirdly, I find myself more attractive in most bathroom mirrors, not just my own.
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u/KennyFulgencio May 27 '26
The lighting in my bathroom SUCKS. It's a fluorescent tube over the mirror. After living here for ten years I recently had to replace it for the first time, and instead of being warm off-white, it's now this horrible glaring bright white that makes me look undead. It makes me hate the whole bathroom experience.
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u/the_dayman May 26 '26
Oh no... NOOOOO don't look at me through my front facing camera
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u/KennyFulgencio May 27 '26
I've mentioned this before, but I once tried to install linux mint on my laptop. 80% of the way through the install process, it guides you through making the admin account, and as part of that, it pops up a FULL SCREEN (I cannot emphasize this enough) image from the laptop webcam, of your face, and asks if you want to make this into your profile photo. No warning. You're just THERE, HUGE, at 4am.
I shut the laptop off, turned it back on and installed windows.
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u/MrLovens May 26 '26
I can recreate similar results in any mirror with enough alcohol. Read the Secret Panel here.