Why we all look bad in dressing room mirrors

Take heart! The way you look in a department store dressing room isn’t likely the way you look in real life. Even though you would think dressing room mirrors would be designed to make you look amazing in order to facilitate sales, the opposite is actually true, and it can have a significant impact on your psychological state at the time.

SEE ALSO: Improving your self-esteem and truly loving yourself

Almost everyone has picked up an outfit on the store floor and taken it into the dressing room with high hopes. Once inside the tiny compartment allotted for changing, however, the once-appealing item is suddenly unflattering–along with almost every aspect of the body suddenly revealed. The result of this scenario is usually embarrassment and shame, and for some people can even trigger depression symptoms.

“Self-objectification has a variety of negative consequences — always worrying about how you look, shame about the body, and [it] is linked to eating disorders and depression,” study researcher Marika Tiggemann, a psychologist at Flinders University in Australia, wrote in an email to LiveScience.She and her team added, “The physical presence of observers is clearly not necessary. More particularly, the dressing room of a clothing store contains a number of potentially objectifying features: (often several) mirrors, bright lighting, and the virtual demand that women engage in close evaluation of their body in evaluating how the clothes appear and fit.”

On top of already being overly critical, women are unfairly being duped to believe the image they see in the mirror is accurate. Beaming, overhead florescent lighting and distorted mirrors, however, are actually playing tricks with the mind in many dressing rooms, causing every fine line, wrinkle and divot to look 1,000 times worse than it would in natural lighting. What’s more, The Free-Lance Star reports improper mirror hanging can cause features to take on strange angles, and overhead florescent lighting is notorious for creating the appearance of dimples in skin where there really aren’t any.

Florescent lighting also dictates how the eyes see colors, which is why many department stores opt to use it. Not only is florescent lighting inexpensive in the scheme of lighting options, it is primarily made up of blue light waves, which not only creates a blue tint but also draws out cooler colors. Unfortunately, other lighting, like that with more yellow tones, is what gives the skin a healthy, radiant appearance.

SEE ALSO: 4 steps for minding your mind for a positive self-image

Based on this information, it should comes as no surprise that, of all the articles of clothing we try on, bathing suits top the list of items that make people feel horrible about their body image. The skimpier the clothing, the more skin is exposed to the mirror and florescent lighting.

The moral of the story? Don’t let dressing room mirrors get you down. The lighting in stores is designed to make clothes on the racks look appealing, and most companies neglect the dressing room area for reasons related to time and money. Hope may be on the horizon, though, as more and more consumer reports suggest the final clothing sale happens in the dressing room and these locations should therefore be where the most attention to ambiance is given.

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