Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi,

When you look at your teeth in the mirror, you normally see a reflection of your teeth. When you look at the reverse of the reflection does it look totally goofy to you? To try this you have to have two mirrors and reflect the reflected image. Or take a digital picture and flip it. I really feel like my teeth look more crooked when I do this. (And well they are supposed to be pretty straight after 13 months)

Anyone else?

But...when you reflect a reflected image are you not seeing what everyone else sees?

yes, but it is not what you normally see

I was just fretting over that the other day when I saw a reflected reflection in a store mirror.

I realize that there's nothing weird about it, but it looked REALLY WEIRD. I thought my teeth were straight, but in that image I saw that the two sides are not symmetrical.

You can also do it with a picture of your teeth and a photo editing program.

it is disconsurting seeing your own teeth how others see them. Not sure why I bet i has something to do with how we see ourselves. Perceptions and all that stuff. kinda like when your hand is numb you know its there but all th signals arent right.

i know exactly what u mean!!!! i was completely obsessing about it because when I do the reflection in a reflection thing, my lips look completely twisted, and one of my central incisors looks about 4 mm longer than the other...Is that how others really see me? I thought it was just because it was just the angles of the two mirrors...=(

Thanks everyone for answering.

I hope that people don't see a crooked us when they look at us. I think that we have been looking at our face in a reflection for so long and our faces really are not symmetrical at all, so when we see it the opposite way, it really throws us. But I just keep having this thought that if someone meets me who has never known me before do they see crooked me or just sort of okay me? I think it is fascinating. I may do more research on this.

Wow! This is heavy:

http://www.truemirror.com/press/html%5C ... s.0799.asp

i think ppl see a non-crooked version of us...b/c i continually tell my sister that my face is crooked and she always says i'm being silly...and i have never looked at ppl and thought "oh wow...he/she has a crooked face"...so i don't think that ppl that first see us think we look crooked either...

Thanks everyone for the lively conversation! Yeah, the mirror thing is pretty stupid, they are obviously just trying to sell something. I would never pay $200.00 for a mirror but after I read it I went and parted my hair on the other side and I looked hideous. Dates be damned! I am not chaning my hair! The fact that I don't have dates is because I'm not on Match.com not because of the part in my hair+++ LOL++++.

Well anyway, I think my theory was correct. We don't see our assymetries when we look in the mirror because we are so familiar with our faces. If I know where they are, sure I see them. The reverse image just tends to point out differences. This is why they tell bankers to turn signatures upside down to compare and see if they match. This way you are not reading the word, but comparing angles, etc.

I just thought it was an interesting subject. It is certainly not meant to get people upset or anything.

i too thought it was highly interesting...and i didn't know that they flipped signatures over to compare them...you learn something new everyday =)

i just tried the expirement and never realised my teeth looked so disgusting HAHAHA !

i must have just gotten used to my mirror teeth and not noticed how bad they really are

it made me so thankful that i have braces.

My Mum is an identical twin and they didn't realise until they were in their 40s that they parted their hair on different sides from each other (and only then because someone else mentioned it) because when they looked at each other they saw pretty much what they were used to seeing in the mirror.

I remember seeing my photos in the ortho's office and thinking "these must be reversed, I wonder why they flip them" because the chip in my incisor was on the wrong side...

It was only after reading this post that I realized my only real concept of myself and my appearance is from the mirror...

I feel a little dumber now.

This is really how other people see you, but the only reason that it looks weird is because it's not the way you're use to seeing yourself. It really doesn't look as bad as our minds make it look. Our minds are very picky about the way we look. When other people see us, they're use to seeing that image, so when they see the reverse(what we see in the mirror)it looks weird to them. It really doesn't look bad. If your teeth look good in the mirror, they look good when other people see them, too.