Why a Magnifying Mirror Is a Huge Mistake

When I was a wee lass, I dreamed of being an astronomer. Then I found out astronomers need to be proficient in math. There went that dream. I still loved learning about the planets and stars, though, and my dad even got an acquaintance of his who worked at NASA to send me some beautiful pictures of Saturn, which I have framed and hung in my office. This is one of them:

Pretty cool, right? Thanks, Dad (and NASA).

You know what else is nice? Those closeup shots of the moon, of dreamy-sounding places like the Sea of Tranquility.

I don't know if the Sea of Tranquility is in this shot, but thanks, NASA, nonetheless!

You know what is NOT nice? Magnifying mirrors. Bear with me a second, because this will all make sense shortly.

You're cruising around through life, thinking you look okay. I mean, sure, you can accept that you're not a supermodel, but overall, not too shabby. In fact, a little like this:

Maybe with a *slightly* shorter neck, but yeah, this looks about right. 

One day, you're at the drugstore buying, oh, I don't know, hemorrhoid cream (BECAUSE YOU READ IT REDUCES EYE PUFFINESS, DAMMIT) and you see one of these:

And looky here! It's the BEST CHOICE OF THE YEAR! 

"Magnifying my face by 10 times? How fantastic!" you think. "I can use it to touch up eye makeup, perform eyebrow maintenance, and examine my freakishly long neck for suspicious moles."

You jam it into your basket, pay for your treasures, and race home, eager to use those suction cups to attach it to your larger mirror. You moisten the suction cups, press the magnifying mirror to the larger mirror, and lean in, eager to begin your examination. The mirror pops off. You re-moisten it, press a little harder, and it slides down about 10 inches. You dry off the suction cups, curse loudly, and smash the mirror onto the larger one AGAIN. You wait 20 seconds. Okay, this time it's holding. You lean in. It falls off.

"G*DDAMMIT!" you shout as you snatch up the miraculously unbroken mirror from the bottom of the sink.

By now you're red-faced and perspiring. But you're going to touch up your eye makeup, by gum! So you take a deep breath and bring the little miracle mirror to you.

"This will work just fine," you murmur, as you check your eye makeup.

Okay, a little smudging at the corners. No problem! You do some touching up and step back to see the effect in the larger mirror. Nice! Looking goooooooooooood.

"Hey," you think -- and here's where things go to hell -- "why don't I take a closer look AT MY ENTIRE FACE?"

Foolishly, you begin navigating the contours of your face with the little mirror and disgusting flaws come into immediate and unwelcome focus. Flaws that are magnified *10 times*. Holy CRAP, what is that hair doing THERE? You snatch up the tweezers for an emergency pluck. OMG, is this eyebrow hair...? YES, it's WHITE! YOU HAVE A WHITE EYEBROW HAIR! You clutch the tweezers in trembling fingers for another emergency pluck. It only gets worse. You will notice you have about 4,983 more zits, age spots, and wrinkles than you thought could even FIT on a human face. Glorious 10X magnification! Your face looks a lot like that closeup of the moon, with the occasional one of these moles thrown in for laughs:

On the bright side, and there's only one positive thing that will come out of this purchase: you can re-do your ruined-from-weeping eye makeup quite nicely now. So there's that.

I can't end this post without a word of warning: do not, under ANY circumstances, use this mirror of horrors to look in your ears or your nose. Such reckless actions will bring you only misery. And you already feel bad enough as it is....