Mirrors of self-reflection

How, and when, do women get to know themselves as self-willed sexual beings, distinct from their families?  By looking in a mirror, especially during adolescence, which is not at all the way a boy learns to know himself.  Teenage girls peer into mirrors all day long to find out how others see them, what impact they're going to have on the world around them...

This isn't the time-wasting obsession that adults think it is.  Like it or not, an adolescent girl recognizes that she's an object as well as a subject, a soul encased in a carcass that's the material she was given to work with in order to attract a mate and advance nature's program of making a mother of her.
At any age, can a woman stand in front of a mirror for more than thirty seconds and acknowledge herself simply as an object in space, without correcting her appearance in some way - running her fingers through her hair or wiping the corners of her lips - while making some silent comment about her looks, more often than not unfavorable?

Susan Mrosek - Mirror

 In short, looks matter.  We can manage to be more than the body, but there's no way we can be less.

     ~ Joan Gould, from Spinning Straw Into Gold
      Art by Susan Mrosek