- Right before this interview, I ran to that mirror
over there to see what I look like,
so looks like it's going to be a hard week (laughs).
- I'm one of those people who like doesn't like
to go out in public unless I know how other people
are seeing me.
- I wish I could say that I didn't care
about my appearance, but that wold be a lie.
- How many times do I look at a mirror?
- Five, six times a day?
- I mean, I use it like pretty much all the time.
- It's just like I casually like walk by, like,
"Oh, hey, cool, that's me.
"This is what I look like and who I am."
- Dreading how much I realize how vain I am,
because I really do check myself out a lot.
- So this is my mirror.
I'm getting ready to cover it for the next week.
- I taped up my mirror with a garbage bag.
I took down all the mirrors in my apartment.
- Don't look.
Don't break anything.
I'm in a hotel this weekend.
There are mirrors everywhere.
Why do we have mirrors on like five sides?
Like why is that necessary?
If we go back to caveman times, there were no mirrors.
People probably had better self-esteem when we're like
rolling rocks around.
- I'd have to be like, "Oh, can't look over there.
"There's a window with a reflection.
"Oh, can't look over there.
"There's a mirror."
- And I have silver-plated faucets,
and all of a sudden I see myself.
This world is filled with reflective surfaces, I swear.
- That first day was so fun because I just like
I imagined I looked awesome without makeup.
- The first day, people were kind of like
looking at me weird, probably because I looked like
a hot mess or at least I felt like I did.
- I got to work realizing I was going to like weird
people out because they've never seen me without
liquid eyeliner.
I wore my sunglasses a lot more.
- I would like refuse to make eye contact with them
or like constantly look at the ground.
- I went to go meet some friends for frozen yogurt.
I'm like looking for social cues.
- And someone was like, "Michelle, I think you have
"something on your face."
And I like rubbed my nose.
There was like a huge piece of snot
like just coming out of my nose.
- There's just like enough of like eyebrow lift.
That was like my mirror to be like,
"What? Uh-oh!"
- I wanted to like brush my teeth and look at myself.
- I usually look in the mirror.
- Why do you look at yourself when you brush your teeth?
- The most frustrating was not being able to check
if I had food in my teeth.
I felt like that was a basic human right.
- I had my girlfriend help me shave.
- Why are you pretending to look in the mirror?
- I don't know.
That's just what I'm used to.
There?
- You go up a little higher.
Move for a little bit.
There.
See, you look great.
Looking just great.
- Really?
- I mean, it's good as it's going to get.
- Yesterday, I cheated.
I had a date, and I definitely looked in the mirror
because I wanted to make sure that I looked good.
I wanted to feel good about myself.
- Yesterday I was like, "Oh, my gosh.
"This is really difficult.
"I want to stop doing this (laughs)."
- It was horrid at first, but then
it actually became pretty enjoyable.
- It actually freed me up even more to be low-maintenance.
- Today is day four.
I've stopped kind of giving a (beeps) what I look like,
which is very freeing.
It felt like I was on vacation.
It takes me five minutes to get ready.
- I always feel like at the gym, like, oh, I'm looking
in the mirror to check my form.
But really, I'm like looking to criticize myself.
I noticed a big difference.
The workout went way faster because
I wasn't sitting there criticizing myself.
- I didn't know I'd have to look at myself
in the mirror on camera.
- I'm dreading that a little bit.
- Oh.
- Oh, my (exclaims)!
- I don't look so bad.
- It looks familiar.
It's nice.
- I look so different from what I remember (laughs).
- Do I always look like this?
My hair looks so stupid.
I'm over it, man.
I don't want to look at myself anymore (laughs).
- You should totally do this challenge
just to see like how special it is
to be able to look at yourself.
- If you don't have anything nice to say
about yourself, don't look at a mirror.
And I'm so much happier when I don't
have the opportunity to say those things.
- And my goal is to look in the mirror and kind of like
instead of.
- This past week was probably the most body positive
I've felt about myself.
I'm just so surprised by it.
What I think about myself is what
puts me down the most.
I'm the one who's mean to myself,
like it's not anybody else.
It's really just me.
- Everybody should try this.
Free ourselves from the chain of the mirror.
- I had to lose it to appreciate it.
- And that may be my chance I turned into Brad Pitt,
but it didn't happen.