What I See when I look in the Mirror

According to its press release, the What I See Project is 'a global online platform that recognises and amplifies women's voices'. I was delighted to be asked to be part of this fascinating project, but I was also worried by the project's apparent emphasis on the visual. As I say in my video reflection, modern society's obsession with how we look has the unintended consequence of privileging sight over all the other senses. This in turn has the nasty effect of turning blindness into a tragedy. 

I have found that society's obsession with the misery of blindness makes it very difficult for the blind and the partially blind to feel happy and confident about themselves. When pity is the prevailing emotion you encounter in strangers, it is easy to think of yourself as a victim. Self-pity is a destructive state of mind; it leads to low self-esteem and depression. But until society stops pitying the blind, how will the blind learn to stop pitying themselves?

I want to use my part in the What I See project to encourage women to think critically about our relationship with sight. Why do we care what we see in the mirror? Why is appearance to crucial to us? Do we really learn important details about a person from how they look to us? My face-blindness means I cannot recognise my family, friends and colleagues by their facial features. Instead I recognise them by their general shape, their unique style and their voice. This can have its disadvantages but it also has its uses. It constantly reminds me that we are much more than what we appear to be: we have experiences, history, memories which are not necessarily visible on our surface. As another contributor to the What I See project, Karen Morris at Beyond the Bathroom Scale reminds us, bodily appearance is overrated. Karen writes eloquently about the need to embrace the reality of how our bodies look here.

The communicator videos and ambassador profiles on the What I See webpage are reassuringly resistant to the purely visual. It turns out that I needn't have worried. Most women see much more than their surface appearance when they look in the mirror. But society at large is still obsessed with sight. Hopefully this will change in the wake of this exciting project.

Upload a video describing what you see when you look in the mirror and you might win an invitation to the What I See launch event at the Science Museum on October 1st.

Face Blindness

One of the reasons that I love audio description is that I have always been terrible at recognising people. I just do not see faces clearly enough to be able to tell who people are from what they look like.  I recognise most people I know by a combination of their voice, their general body shape, their hair style, the clothes that they wear and, crucially, the context in which I encounter them.

So if I am at work and someone says hello to me in the corridor, I know it is most likely a student or colleague. My brain usually comes up with the right identity based on the factors listed above. If this doesn't work I tend to enquire after the person's health in the hope that either their voice and general demeanour will tell me who (as well as how) they are, or they will mention in passing some crucial piece of information (a location, child's name, shared concern) which will allow me to work out who they are.

This somewhat haphazard approach usually works reasonably well. More often than not I manage to work out who I am talking to before it becomes apparent that I started off the conversation completely in the dark. Luckily, most people are relatively predictable in their style of dress and general body shape. Most people are also more than happy to talk about themselves, thus giving me crucial clues as to their identity. But recently, I found myself in two situations where my tried and tested people-recognition techniques faltered.

Over the weekend I attended a party at my parents' house. Although I have known many of the guests for over thirty years, I spent much of the evening struggling to work out who I was talking to. It seems that people who have no problem with facial recognition cannot imagine what it is like not to recognise people in this way. Even though my eyes look noticeably different from other people's and all my parents' friends know that I am registered blind, no-one told me who they were before embarking in conversation. I think I made a reasonably good job of putting names to faces, especially because I knew exactly who was at the party, but it was quite an effort and did lead to some awkward moments. If I had been wearing dark glasses and /or holding my white cane, I'm sure people would have been more forthcoming. But I guess it feels odd to introduce yourself to someone who you have known for thirty years.

It is hardest for me to recognise people when they appear in an unexpected place or at an unexpected time. I would not recognise my husband if I encountered him unannounced at my place of work. I would not be able to pick out my children if I happened across them during a school trip and I would not recognise my best friend if I met her in the supermarket. This does not mean I do not love these people, it just means that I need more clues before I can identify them. This morning I was approached at the railway station by a friendly stranger who turned out to be a close and dear friend. When he first said hello to me I had no idea who he was. I quickly ran through a mental list of which people I might conceivably encounter at Oxford station early on a Monday morning and no one on this (admittedly short) list fitted. Plus, I wasn't even sure he was talking to me. He persisted in his greeting until I smiled and said hello back. Still having no idea who he was, I asked him which train he was getting in the hope that this would prompt him to reveal some crucial information without giving away the fact that I still didn't know who I was talking to. Luckily as soon as he said more than a few words I recognised his voice instantly and was (belatedly) delighted to see him.

As I ran for my train I wondered why I put myself in such an awkward situation. When my friend said hello to me, why did I pretend I knew who he was? Why not simply ask him to tell me his name? Social convention is a pretty powerful thing. Everything we learn about human interaction is based on the assumption that human faces are instantly recognisable. Infringing this rule feels deeply wrong. Perhaps I'm worried that people will be embarrassed by their assumptions, offended by my forgetfulness or hurt by their own apparent forgetableness. More alarmingly, I wonder if my reluctance to ask people to identify themselves comes from deep-seated feelings about my blindness. Despite my best efforts, am I still harbouring feelings of shame or self-hatred? Is my denial of my own inability to recognise people part of a need to 'pass' as a perfectly sighted person and thus refuse the validity of my way of seeing? Whilst sipping my latte I decided that I would use the memory of this encounter to be more honest with people about what I can and cannot see.