Mirror View Off: Learning How to Use Zoom, During COVID, to Accept(ish) My Cleft Lip

By Cleo Aukland

We only see faces. That’s what people have mostly become now; two-dimensional faces cubed in rows, many at once, framed with curly tumbling hair or hats or coffee mugs. I study shadows and crevices. I know the folds around my coworker’s eyes, the curve of cheekbones of close friends. We are all also slightly blurred; it’s not an airbrushed quality, not like it erases blemishes, but more that we only exist on the screen. No clarity of true sight.

Another thing. Most of us only exist behind masks which hide half of our faces. Only eyes and eyebrows to show expressions, reading squinting eyes as smiling (maybe) but also not being able to show anger when catcalled. We are anonymous and I half love it, but half hate it. On masks: there’s a part in a book I loved as a child which includes a masquerade ball, and the narrator says that under the mask, her nose and mouth looked unfamiliar to her. This could never be the case with me, I think often.

My top lip, stitched, one part bulbous, one part regular, is healed over a cleft. My nose is curved and crooked, nostrils different sizes. I wonder what people think about my face when they see me in a mask: is it more normal? More beautiful? What do they think lies beneath it? Something shaped normally? A mouth stitched regular and a center nose? So I half love the face mask. I get to see myself regular. Get to look at hazel almond-shaped eyes and sleek eyebrows, the freckled bridge of my nose, and picture myself differently.

This is an odd thing. I know. I’m twenty-five; old enough to have lived with something for so long and gotten used to it. I wish I could harness the power of self-love and undying positivity for my mussed mouth and nose. But my face is still a shock to me. I sometimes catch sight of myself in a double mirror and oscillate between turning away as fast as I can and peering at myself, like I have caught myself vulnerable. It takes a second to realize that this is how everyone sees me. I am the only one who knows myself backwards.

Like the rest of the world currently, I exist for most people on screen. My roommates get the three-dimensional version of me, see that my body goes on past my chest and torso, but otherwise, I am a box among many. It’s a strange thing, for many reasons, but also because I spend much more time looking at myself than I used to. I adjust my hair in my box, constantly test my nods and eyebrow raises and hair flicks to see if it looks good. It is exhausting pleasing myself. And then I realized there is a function on Zoom (oh Zoom, our portal, our connection, our new way of life… I am wanton for the days I had never cared about Zoom) that lets you look at yourself backwards. You have to turn mirror view off.

It started as a way to be more engaged during meetings. I would zone out slightly, studying the way my smile looked from anybody else’s perspective. I would pull my hair over one shoulder and constantly fix it, accidentally reaching for the wrong side as I watched myself on screen. I was transfixed by how much I hated it, sometimes. Hated that I looked like this to other people when I have spent my entire life learning to love myself in the mirror, because my face is asymmetrical enough that I feel I am a different person.

(I remember when I first realized, with horror, that people did not see me the way I saw myself in the mirror. Sometimes I’m nervous for anyone to look at me in a mirror. What if me in the mirror is more beautiful than the real me?)

There were (are) endless Zoom meetings, however. I started to switch my setting back and forth; it was always a relief to go back to the familiar face that I know. Sexier smile, kinder eyes, less off. This is the girl I think of. This is the girl I have confidence in. This is the girl I know of as myself. But then I’d eschew mirror view; why? To keep me on my toes? To understand that if I move my right hand, that it will be on the left side on my screen? I suppose I wanted to scare myself. This is the time to get to know yourself, I thought. You will not be staring at yourself like this as much again. I was using the time to recognize myself the way others see me.

Because it’s true. This is a freakish time. I, like everyone, have gotten so close to myself; everyone is spending time with themselves, only themselves, for so long. Even if you live with others, as I do, you spend time alone. You learn what makes you excited, what weird things make you angry, what makes you feel good. And if you already know those things, you learn them even more. We have so much time to trace patterns on our bedroom ceilings and memorize wooden grooves on tables underneath our laptops. Maybe you’ve learned you actually like chickpeas. Maybe you’ve learned that you’re shockingly good at learning Icelandic. Maybe you’ve learned that you fucking can’t stand Friends.

I’ve learned that I am a good baker and a quick learner; I’ve recognized that I savor mouthfuls instead of scarfing down my breakfast. I’ve learned that my temper is short when I am stuck inside and that I can be selfish. I’ve learned how to deal with anguish over my family when I have little else to distract me. I’ve embraced a remarkable inner nerd, playing Zelda and watching Avatar: the Last Airbender and writing a fantasy novel. I’ve learned to crave stretching my legs. And I’ve learned to normalize my face. Finally, after years and years, all it took was a pandemic which required me to stare at myself on a computer and quench my attention deficit disorder by studying my face in new angles during long meetings.

It’s happened recently. I’ve forgotten about mirror view. I realized it when I was on a Zoom writers’ group with friends of mine and my roommate. Sitting beside me, she balked at the unfamiliar screen, the two of us switched; I changed the setting for her, and found the next day during a meeting that I was caught off guard by the mirror view. I’ve become accustomed to my face.

I still don’t like it. I’ll say that. I still prefer the face I know so well in the mirror, in windows, in FaceTime. I know her. I am comfortable with her. That’s the face I put makeup on, the face I use when I put my hair up, the face I’ve seen covered in tears, sunburned, smiling, covered in tears for happier reasons, exhausted, dried out, flushed, tired, alert, angry, excited, in love… but I’ve now learned to know my true my face. Not love it. But recognize it. It’s an experiment I never saw happening. Why, with tantamount free time, would I ever spend it normalizing how others see me?

An accomplishment, though. What did you do during COVID? people might ask decades from now. I learned my face. I learned my cleft lip, internalized that my nose swings the other way, found that my smile was still beautiful. And eventually, as things perhaps start to look up, when weary heads lift for hope and vaccines the thought of seeing one another in person, I can use my new face. I can be with newfound pride.

You can find Cleo at CleoAukland.weebly.com.