Odd question about the lying mirror

I've only one question.

How much will you take for the mirror?

Mike: LOL.

My mirror may not be telling the truth? I thought it was the camera. I prefer to believe that I am not photogenic. In the mirror I look 35 and I vote for that!

I guess it's because we are most familiar with our image in the mirror - we see it several times a day, that's "us". We are much less accustomed to the images showing our face from any other angle and sometimes the work done by entropia shows painfully clear.
Recently, noticing aloud that my hair in the mirror are more fair than ever, I realized that all those single gray hairs aren't that single anymore.

I'm pushing 60 and have a bit more grey than you describe, but don't see it in the mirror well, either. I think it is perceptual.

Tracking how we scan our faces in the mirror and in a photo might prove it. I think that we treat ourselves in a photo like a stranger, looking over the face more objectively. In the mirror we probably check very few points on our faces before deciding, "this is me" and assuming it is the face we have in memory: a younger face.

I see, in person, a similar effect with my wife of 30+ years: I scan her face, recognize it is the young woman I married, and perceive her that way. I have a very hard time seeing the signs of aging that are so apparent in new faces I meet that are the same age.

Or is this just the psychological manifestation of Einstein's dictum: âWomen marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointedâ?

Oh, and by the way, Einstein, I put the toilet seat down. And Val's still young. Genius my ass.

i often find myself admiring my stunning beauty in my mirror at home, being decidedly less impressed in other mirrors - at work, but worst of all in shop mirrors. photos are the most confusing though, sometimes fatter and more akward than i imagined possible, and very occasional even more gorgeous than i my home mirror. it's a very confusion conundrum.

Instead of worrying, adopt the persona of the silver fox. Or vixen.

I think this is related to the reason older ladies have blue hair -- the light source used and the difference between a reflection and a photographic image.

The lenses of our eyes yellow over time (well, one of mine is yellow; the other is nice clear plastic; it's a cataract replacement done long ago with the old type material that does nothing to block ultraviolet).

So I see colors quite differently when I compare the two eyes (and have to carefully protect that retina from UV with hat and UV-blocking glasses)

Indoor lighting is biased visually toward the yellow end. That's true even for halogen incandescents, plenty of heat there. ('white' fluorescents and 'white' LEDs do have a big spike in the blue but also have phosphors emitting toward the yellow end of the spectrum).

So, at the beauty parlor, under incandescent lighting, "white" hair looks yellow-gray. The professionals use rinses that add optical brighteners (same stuff goes into your laundry!) -- blue and UV excite that material and it returns extra white light. You see that result through older, yellowed lenses in normal eyes -- and it looks normal.

And for us males, with our untreated hair, indoors, under incandescent/'warm' fluorescent lights, with our older yellowed lens(es) -- our gray hair doesn't stand out as stark white, it looks, well, call it very very light brown (grin).

But take a photograph, and what are you using? Sunlight, or a nice electric-blue bright flash, and rendering the result into the dye spectrum of the print -- and 'gray' hair looks far whiter.

And of course younger people, with their younger, clearer eyes, see us as ... well, let's not talk about that, eh?

PS, for light spectra of various kinds of lamps, see:
http://ledmuseum.candlepower.us/led/spectra7.htm

Craig, who has run the LEDmuseum site for a decade now, could use your support if you find the site helpful. He's been unique in the world all this time. And he's disabled, on disability, very limited financially, and providing information like these spectra that are simply unavailable from any manufacturer.

Why does it matter? Look at what different wavelengths do to control biology, from sea turtles to human sleep cycles. When I wanted lights that wouldn't suppress melatonin in the evening, I sent samples to him til I got some without significant emission in the important blue-green band.

Nobody else in the world has made this kind of information available. His site's mostly archival now--out of money, no support. It's still there. Learn from it. Appreciate him.
People ought to, much more.

Never met the guy, but I sure have been helped by his information. Look up the lights you use there.

@Revere: "I'm younger looking and have more hair than in photos."

You may have heard about all these people selling "miracle products" to make you younger and what they do is they take pictures of before and after to "prove" that the treatment worked. I heard that the pictures are part of the optical trick but I only had one class in optics and can't really figure out why.

Back to the question of the shards in the barber chair..,

When at home in front of your own mirror, frequently you are just our from the shower. Point 1: your hair is nice and damp and all alligned (if you'brushed or combed it yet)

What you see at the barber shop is all the misaligned hairs scattered more or less haphazardly. Point 2: when the hairs are all nicely aligned on your head (and sometimes damp), the ones that are still nice and dark and young looking tend to hide the near white senior ones.

I always remark to my stylist how greay all my hair is ecoming. It is much more noticable when the hairs are all piled haphazardly on her floor..,

P.S.: This blog entry is really a surreptitious attempt to discern the seniority of your audience isn't it???

Yes! Absolutely! What is that?

Though I will say, when I turn my head to the left or right it appears more grey. Straight on, less so.

Weird.

That's not the effect of age.

It's grant writing induced hallucination.

I think in addition to the issues neil lists, there's an angle issue - you can't *really* see the top of your head using just one mirror, in the straight-on stance typically used. You certainly can't see the back of your head, which the barber trims, as well.

If you're tall, most people won't be looking at the top of your head anyway. (They will, however, be looking up your nose.)

There's also a perceptual issue. In my head, I bear a semblance to Elle MacPherson, but in mirrors and photographs and, you know, reality as borne out by clothing sizes, I am quite firmly on the short-and-chubby end of the spectrum. (No one can see up my nose.)

A photo is a still shot captured during a moment. The mirror shows us moving. I always look better in the mirror compared to a photo because of this. Reflections in a store window are always a shock though...who IS that silver-haired, short, slightly chubby woman wearing MY clothes?!

I find the mirror has more of an illusion of a 3 dimension view than the photo. To me photos always looks like I'm being stretched and flatten out against the point of view.
Optics strikes me as being a very complex and neato weird specialty science.

Oh yeah -- lookin' much better in the mirror than in photos. Even the magnifying ones :-/ These days I don't send any photo of me to anyone until I Photoshop out numerous signs of aging. Looking at unretouched photos of me has motivated me to look into the latest fillers and minimally invasive lower face lifts. Sorry I'm vain but I yam what I yam. (Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss.)

Socially, would it not be more progressive to not try for less of that, you know, greyness? Healthwise, though, I can see where the mirror wants to show the nice black head of hair look. Healthier, also, for the mirror, if it's a glass one.

If you have ever been away from familiar adults (parents, siblings, friends...) for an extended period, you know that for the first minutes you are reunited with them,sometimes a little longer, they look 'different'. It feels like you suddenly see them the way they appear to strangers. For better or for worse, the feeling fades as you get reacquainted, and you soon end up telling each other that "you haven't changed one bit!". That might get an amused smile from your spouse, and a snicker from your teenage children, who of course know better.
Epistemology's hypothesis seems believable. How does it account for this 'getting reacquainted' scenario? I think quite well.

I have both a mirror and a scale that lie to me.

While in high school, I remember looking at myself in the mirror and convincing myself that I was fat. When I look at photos of myself at that age, I wonder what the hell I was thinking. Now I think I convince myself that I'm much skinnier and younger-looking than I appear in photos. Oh my, how perceptions change.

Mirrors are different from film in one significant way: the image is perceived as being reversed. So the way you see yourself in the mirror is not the way other people see you. In a photograph, you're seeing yourself as you appear to others, so the part of your hair seems to be on the wrong side, etc.

There's a website that sells specially-contrived mirrors that reflect an image that lets you see how you look to others.

http://www.truemirror.com/

(I have no commercial interest or connection with them.)

Yup I have that problem too. I go with the angle theory. Although I think it's more than what can be seen or not seen by different perspectives. I suspect the light we see reflected through looking in mirrors at ones head tends to be refracted and diffused through the hair so the reflected colours appear to be less grey or brown individually but a combination of the two. So its not all vanity. Or at least I tell myself that...

My guess is it's a lighting effect.

We look at ourselves in the mirror most often when we're in the bathroom. My bathroom has an east-facing window, and in the early morning when the sun is coming in the window, my hair is gray and I've got lots of wrinkles. Later in the day I've dropped about 10 years, and after it gets dark and I turn the bathroom light on, I'm a good 20 years younger.