How a pair of purple-colored lenses decolored my perception of the world
“Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me?”
A week ago, I received my first pair of colored circle lenses in my mailbox. I chose purple because it is less common than brown and gray. It is not a natural eye color and therefore it is unique. It also represents royalty and power.
I was ecstatic and immediately tried them on. I couldn’t help but smile for a good minute or two (or five) and pose in front of my bathroom mirror.
And then it suddenly hit me. That woman looking back at me is not what I really look like. She is merely a reflection of how I want the world to see me.
That reflection is superficial. It hides the fear, the longing, the disappointment, the imperfection, and everything else that makes me a real human being. Not only that, but it is also fabricated.
We’ve all heard of advice like “don’t believe everything you see on Facebook because it is only a showcase of other people’s carefully chosen and crafted reality.”
It truly dawned on me just how much we edit ourselves in our daily lives when I saw myself with those beautifully unreal pair of purples eyes.
We act as if we’re in front of cameras. We filter ourselves the same way we filter our pictures on Instagram. We only present a molded fragment of ourselves to the world.
We filter the events of our lives. We do this because we seek the same recognition and validation we have for others when posts of their perfect vacation, expensive meal, promotion at work show up on our Newsfeed.
We filter our inner personalities and our inner thoughts. We do this because we don’t want to be perceived negatively by others. We act aloof when our date cancels or ignores us because we don’t want to be seen as needy. We stop ourselves from saying out loud our displeasures for fear of being labeled as overly sensitive, or worse, “crazy.” We display a smile on our face when we feel a frown in our heart to please others.
We filter the way we look. We do this because it is the unfortunate truth that physical appearance is such a gigantic social force in our society. We perceive attractive people to possess desirable personality traits such as intelligence and honesty. There is a term for this phenomenon, it’s called “physical attractiveness stereotype.” Studies have shown over and over again that attractive people have an advantage in all aspects of life, from the workplace to the dating scene. Women who spend time putting together their appearance such as by wearing make up make more money. In dating apps (some truer than others and more so for men), we use a person’s physical appearance to make our left or right judgement call.
These things are no secrets to me, but when I saw my purple-eyed reflection in the mirror, it truly hit me that what we see and what we show are not even close to half of the whole truth. And what’s unfortunate is that we use all these filters and we do all these edits because we have to. The society in which we live compels us to.
Thus, will I stop wearing my purple lenses? Regrettably, no. I don’t have the courage to. But for today, I will show you my truth. I present to you both versions of me. One is the genuine, unfiltered version with my imperfections. The other is an illusion of what I display to the world everyday: the carefully retouched version with those big, unreal pair of purple eyes.
