Athena Dixon
Mirror, Mirror
There are six of me in the funhouse-style mirrors. Outside this converted shipping container, the hot Las Vegas air is dry. Inside, the container is cool, both in temperature and color. The walls swirl with blue and green and neon lights softly glowing, unlike the garish visual noise of Fremont Street where my family and I stay for the week. The city, or at least where tourists corral, is all noise and liquor and slot machines. And there are bodies everywhere. Tall and thin. Short and round. Curvy. Muscle-bound and shirtless. Tall and big like me.
My family waits for me to emerge from this small hall of mirrors so we can join the line to enter the main attraction of the Meow Wolf exhibition, a series of alternative worlds and art installations in a massive building called Area 15, but I linger here, floating. Inside the mirrored box I feel weightless, the self in front of me elongated. My t-shirt hangs just right, and the skinny jeans make my stomach look flat.
I’ve spent the last few days with my arms exposed to the hot air and beating sun. My toes and swollen ankles tied into a pair of barely-used Doc Martens sandals. I hadn’t worn shorts in public for years, but here, all the way across the country, it has felt safe to do so. I’ve let the dresses I packed skim my belly and behind without worrying about jiggle or cellulite.
On the first day a man cornered me as I was exploring with my family, and circled me with his bike. He asked if I was single. He stopped at the intersection with us—whispering goddamn under his breath as he eyed me—until the light changed and I moved with the flow of bodies. I listened for the creak of wheels behind me as we walked to one of the older casinos, then ducked inside to get out of the heat. He didn’t follow. I felt like prey, but also had an odd jolt of contentment. I had been desired. I had been seen.
I am endlessly writing about my body. About how it impacts the manner in which I navigate the spaces I occupy, and how it hinders just as much as it protects. I am still finding the grace and beauty in this body. Learning how to move it without shame, and how to make the self on the other side of this glass reality.
Under the neon, one of my faces is bright pink. I look like all the beauty I’m struggling to find. Another is deep blue and so close to what I am used to seeing when I look at myself. A face that gels most days but leaves something to be desired.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
Scrying is the use of mirrors and other reflective surfaces as a means of revealing the past, present, or future. Sometimes this is achieved with crystal balls, or lakes in moonlight, or even a bowl of water, like Nostradamus. Bloody Mary. The crystal ball from The Wizard of Oz. Alice’s looking glass. The evil queen’s mirror from Snow White. There is power in the idea of transformation—of a portal to a new state of being—that we accept as long as the reflection is not the older self we fear, and from which we are escaping.
These scrying mirrors, in whatever form they may take, do not tell us what to do. They simply lay out what we should notice, what we should see. The Evil Queen spent her life believing one version of herself—the most beautiful woman in all the land. When that reflection shifted, the whole of her bent and twisted into something cruel and ugly because the mirror’s view was now what she feared.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
For me, this depends on the day. It depends on how the light comes through the window or from overhead. Or if I’ve painted my lips bright red. Or if my hair stands up toward the sky, or hangs down my back in ropes of braids. I wonder if this uncertainty in how I view my beauty is because it always depends on something external.
In the box of mirrors, hidden from eyes and expectations not my own, I am not seeking a truth; I am only staring at my multiplied reflection in low light, trying to piece together a beauty I am always unsure of. Like if I stare long enough, I can maybe find a collection of features that sets my face right, and then all will be well.
This small exhibit reminds me how I show up to the world—imperfect and fragmented—and, with the belief of a few illusions, what could be. The mirrors don’t tell me who I should be. They only reflect what I’ve given it. My rounded body, slightly warped. In some ways, this reflection is a woman I recognize, and the rest are illusions of myself. I get to choose which one I will walk away with.
I choose the cool blue shadow face—the one dead center of the half circle— because it is the closest to reality. This is the real me—far from the golden ratio, smooth skin, rounded eyes, and unnatural perfection. I cannot answer many questions that pertain to my beauty. I am still trying to figure out what it means to me. How it is reflected in what I see in myself. But that is not to say I do not believe in it. I do. This belief may wax and wane, like similar feelings are wont to do for anyone, but I know my beauty exists. I can see it here.
My mother is taking a photo of my father against a towering silver statue when I join my family outside. It’s so hot that he can’t fully place his hand on it to pose. He smiles anyway, and before long, we are disappearing into another building to see the rest of the neon, distorted world.
When we exit, the heat is as heavy as it was earlier. We are all tired from the twists and turns of the massive exhibit. There is no escape from the sun. People are lined up against buildings trying to melt into the shadows while waiting for ride shares. Those against the walls don’t look real. They are more like the murals from The Wiz that pop out from the paint and into reality on Dorothy’s way home. The flat bodies that unfold and unstick until they are fully fleshed. No one comes in or out of the mirrored box while we wait.
No one takes photos under the giant owl with its wings spread wide. It’s just people hiding out under the open blue sky. Some brave ones dart across the parking lot to retrieve cars and rescue the waiting. My family fans out across the concrete, heads down in our phones, requesting rides back to the noise and crush of bodies on Fremont Street. Our reflections in the silver statue wave and undulate as we pass like a mirage. But there is no water to be seen for miles. Just a sea of cars and buildings hiding worlds inside.
The surprise of the box is not the same the second time I enter. The magic of it is gone. A person can only be pulled into an illusion once, and then everything else that follows is a gimmick. The curiosity of seeing what else I may notice makes me enter. I know what to expect when the door opens this time, and I step into a circle of myself, trying to decide just what I believe and what to leave trapped behind the glass.
Even outside of the mirrored box, I am a magpie of myself. Caught in the shiny pieces of beauty I’ve gathered. I’m building a person whose blueprint I don’t fully know because of a lifelong lack of confidence. I can convince myself I am beautiful most days now, but there is a thin line between convincing myself I am beautiful and being a narcissist. I cross this line as I spend far too much time staring at myself in the mirrored box, enamored with what I am coming to love.
It is hard to separate from the other selves in the reflections. Only one of us is real, but all of us are beautiful under the lights and the fractals of glass multiplying my body for what seems like an eternity. I snap a photo, then another and another. The last one is ruined when the door pulls open, and the harsh light of the desert day comes bursting in. It’s too warm on my skin and makes the space too bright as it dissipates the cool-toned light. The six versions of myself that formed a half circle break apart the moment I move. They all fall into a line like Muybridge’s horse as I exit, and the next group of tourists piles in.