Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Throughout Trick Mirror, Tolentino presents identity as malleable, or able to be reshaped. This appears in the way Tolentino describes herself in these essays: not as someone with a fixed identity, but rather as a person whose identity has shifted throughout her life in response to events and movements. The theme also shows up in her analyses of others, whether specific (Jackie in "We Come from Old Virginia") or more general (the ideal woman in "Always Be Optimizing" or the difficult woman in "The Cult of the Difficult Woman").

Tolentino marks numerous changes in her own conception of herself. This is especially apparent in "Reality TV Me," where she questions the reality of the Jia shown on the show. She wonders both if that Jia is the same person she is now, and if that Jia correctly reflects who she was then. She is surprised to find the representation on the show relatively true to her current self-conception. Nevertheless, she writes about the many changes in her own beliefs and self-presentation from that point: her attitudes to pre-marital sex changed, she lost some of her anxiety, and she started having conflicting ideas about the performance of the self.

Malleability of identity is especially notable in Trick Mirror when it refers to public identity and how it affects our conceptions of ourselves. Here, Jackie is an exemplar. She attempted to tell a story that was different in several ways from what happened to her, then tried to prop this story up with fake emails. Tolentino sees this as a desire to reclaim her power in a system structured against her. Similarly, Elizabeth Holmes in "The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams" at first attempts to save her image as a successful entrepreneur before finally being convicted on fraud charges. Holmes’s motivations were profit-based, whereas Jackie's were more complex. Nevertheless, both young women illustrate the changeability and fragility of self-conception when facing the public.

Tolentino also discusses shifting feminine ideals in both "Always Be Optimizing" and "The Cult of the Difficult Women." In the case of the former, she describes how the figure of the ideal woman has changed from Victorian times. With the latter, she discusses the feminist reclamation of the figure of the difficult woman. In both cases, she suggests, these figures have both changed in response to social movements and had an impact on the lives of individuals.

By referencing a "trick mirror" in the collection's title, Tolentino immediately implies that the essays will deal with the relationship between images and reality. However, the relationship as she presents it is not straightforward: the "mirrors" she describes, images and institutions that reflect reality, are also produced by reality. Therefore, her discussions of this topic pose the question as to what is distorted: reality or its images? Throughout the essays, Tolentino implies that the true answer is "both."

Cases of reality affecting images appear early in the book, especially in the essay "Reality TV Me." Tolentino recalls her days on the reality show, hesitates to watch the footage, and then discusses how she appears on the show. Similarly, she writes about the use of the internet as a place for exploring and performing selfhood in "The I in Internet." However, as that essay shows, the internet also reflects users back to themselves, which further complicates the theme.

The "mirror," or image, affecting reality first shows up in "The I in Internet" as Tolentino describes how algorithms, platforms, apps, and the nature of the internet itself change our behavior. The version of ourselves that we see on the internet, she implies, is distorted and distorting. Tolentino is most hopeful about our ability to use images to create a better reality in "Pure Heroines," where she suggests that we use traditional narratives as a starting point for a new kind of story. Thus, though reflections as causes and effects of negative social behavior appear throughout the book, Tolentino occasionally sees a way to disrupt this destructive cycle.

Although often described as a feminist, Tolentino takes issue with a particular kind of feminism in these essays: popular feminism, which she also refers to as "Girlboss feminism" in "The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams." In this movement, the individual success of women is presented as inherently feminist. As Tolentino describes it, popular feminism is present in conferences and co-working spaces sold as networking opportunities for women, headlines that promote health over beauty yet still encourage women to seek an impossible ideal, and books such as Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In that focus on the careers of individuals.

Tolentino treats this movement with nuance; it can be useful to look at individual role models, she suggests. However, in both "Always Be Optimizing" and "The Cult of the Difficult Woman," she shows how the ideas and language of popular feminism have been used against women.

In "Always Be Optimizing," Tolentino notes that this occurs by focusing women's energies on perfecting their own bodies, to the expense of fighting for larger social changes that would help them as a sex.

In "The Cult of the Difficult Woman," she argues that, by defending and reclaiming the figure of the difficult woman, feminists have actually given conservatives a language of sexism that shuts down criticism of individual actions. In doing so, the movement has accidentally created a situation in which women are all seen as the same because of the sexism they face. This in effect erases their individuality (and their politics) and has negative effects on the collective aims of true feminism.