Amayzine

On average, we look in the mirror for this long per day

it appears that 78 percent of women have something negative to say about their appearance. I find that a rather sad outcome. And the longer you stand in front of the mirror, the more you start to notice 'imperfections'. That is exactly what it is: if you stare at yourself in the mirror, the window, or your phone screen long enough, you will always find something. A vicious circle, which we can break by looking in the mirror less often.
I notice that during this vacation I hardly look in the mirror at all. Okay, okay, in the morning when I brush my teeth of course, but other than that I believe it all. I think this is because I feel good from the sun, sea, the beach and that I am less focused on how I look due to all the stimuli. When I am working at home in the Netherlands for a day, it goes quite differently. Especially when boredom strikes, I really walk back and forth to the mirror a hundred times. And then especially to notice that my nose is really just a little bit to the left or that it is high time to remove my mustache again. I am also quite curious about the time we spend on average in front of the mirror.

It won't surprise you, but we spend quite a bit of time on it in a day. Research from Today and AOL shows that women spend an average of 55 minutes a day in front of the mirror, which is about 335 hours a year. Men spend an average of 38 minutes a day in front of the mirror, so 235 hours a year. Moreover, research from Gillette shows that women organize their time in front of the mirror differently than men. Men spend more time in the morning in front of the mirror, fifteen minutes to be exact, while we women manage with thirteen minutes. A small difference, but still, those men are more vain than we think. Spread over the whole day, women ultimately look more in the mirror.

So why do we do this so often? Unfortunately, it comes more from insecurity than from vanity. From the same research from Today and AOL.