So shocked! (lighthearted)

[KitschBitch]

Just popped in M & S to buy some shaping knickers, thought I'd best try them on, off I trotted to the changing room and undressed. Caught myself in the mirrors, one was a rear view and my jaw dropped and I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest - the sight of my cellulite-riddled legs, back fat and lumps and bumps! I work out regularly and eat fairly well and had NO IDEA that I looked so awful! I am hoping that the mirrors and lighting distort you so that they will sell more shaping underwear, but have a nasty feeling that I have just seen the real me. Genuinely shocked. Has anyone else had this experience?

Changing room mirrors and lighting are notoriously evil! Don’t worry about it. You’ll look great in your pants!

Thanks, Dita, kind of you.

HATE those mirrors in changing rooms. You go in feeling decent come out thinking how do I even leave the house without people laughing at me and attempting to harpoon me.

But rest assured, it is the mirrors, bet you looked sexy in your pants

I cannot try clothing on at our nearest John Lewis with their triangular mirror arrangement. I go in as a size 12 reasonably exercised and toned. And once in there I become Jabba the hutt. I feel your pain.

I thought the slanted mirror behind me in Next changing room had inadvertently allowed me a glimpse if the woman in the next cubicle (genuine seconds aghast). I then realised she was wearing my grey pants and had my hair.

Changing room mirrors are evil! I go in as a size 12 reasonably good for my age 51 year old with lovely piled up hair.....and see a lumpy red faced monster sweating in the lights with stringy hair and cellulite. You are not alone

I enter changing rooms as an attractive, albeit slightly overweight woman with a cheery, friendly countenance. The mirrors, however, show a huge, oddly shaped woman who apparently has never been introduced to a hairbrush, and is someone people would be advised to approach with caution.

Oh my goodness I have never mentioned this to anyone because I genuinely thought I looked that awful!
I'm a bit lumpy size 14/16 but my god I don't try anything on in shops because I look so bloody awful it really upsets me :(
Thank you for posting this OP, its good to know I'm not the only one shop mirrors hate

Another one here who sees an absolute gorgon in the changing room mirror!! Or her mother!! M & S are the worst mirrors - I have to get round it by examining how I look before I undress and tell myself "you look OK like this" . It is one of the reasons I hate shopping for clothes as much as I do!

I will never, ever, use an M & S changing room again, have learned a valuable lesson today. Glad I'm not the only one but sorry for your pain too! Hope the horrible memory doesn't attach itself to the knickers - they are meant to give me confidence as going-out pants for Christmas but I feel I should never leave the house again until I am all slender and ironed out! My mum says it's the menopause and that I will look normal again when I've come out the other side a new woman!

I feel your pain, OP. I had a similar experience in my local H&M recently, I felt like I was in front of one of those mirrors you get in the fun house at the fairground. I looked bloody dreadful, all bloated and out of shape.

I had my first panic attack in a Debenhams changing room that did this to me. I've lost nearly 2 stone since but wouldn't go back in one if you paid me.

The M&S changing rooms are absolutely vile!
As a punishment, I’d like to send all those who designed them, including the lighting designers, to spend 24h in one of those cubicles with no clothes on, man and women alike. I’d throw in the M&S executives as well.
And I happen to own a good looking body.
I hate them. There’s either some distortion or magnification or shadowing or something’s not right in there.
I don’t have his problem in any other shops.

Oh yay it’s not just me! The absolute worst bit for me is I have asymmetric breasts and in my head (and in normal mirrors) it’s not that noticeable but as soon as I get in front of the weird angled mirrors I see that I look completely lopsided aaaaaaaaa
I literally have to force myself to only look at the mirror directly in front of me or else I get upset

When I was a size 8 I saw a hideously deformed cellulite ridden creature with awful hair and terrible wrinkles/pasty skin

30 years later and a size 16 I buy everything online

I get that. I never really see my back view at home so am always shocked at my pale blobby form. The worse one is when you are at the hairdressers with wet hair looking in the mirror. I always look like a sweaty jelly fish or something like that

Yes to Branster's idea!

there are 2 kinds of changing room mirrors. One will make you look like a plucked overweight cellulite-y chicken. Second kind will make you all slim and tall, so you think the garment you're trying on must be extremely flattering, pay the national debt of a small country for it, only to discover that it was all a lie.

Frankly I think I prefer the 1st kind. So if something looks half-decent on in that changing room, I might actually not scare small children when wearing it.

Hate to give you the bad news but changing room mirrors and lighting are designed to make you look good so you buy the products

But the only mirror I ever look even remotely decent in is the full length one at home. Not just me - others have noticed they look better in it too. My personal theory (completely unscientific) is that because it's the product of altruism and sisterly affection* it's somehow imbued with magical properties....
*years ago dsis got very excited about having one the lottery (£125) and spent her entire winnings on giving us all presents. She was working at a picture framers at the time and made the mirror for me

Alwaswantfood that’s most reassuring. The M&S ones must be designed to make us look good by comparison to an ogre.

I shop online after similar horrors. Any fitting room, or even those mirrors on the shop floors make me look 20 years older and as if I haven't slept in 10 years. My carefully styled hair looks like a stringy bush and I have increased by 8 sizes. My legs have shortened and any shoes I try on increase the width of my feet so they look like sawn off skateboards.

Strangely I don't look like that in my own mirrors. It makes me wonder how I look to other people...

Yes! In my own, non-skinny making mirrors I look ok-ish for a nearly-50-yr-old! Any body confidence I may have had (which was pretty abysmal) has totally plumetted! F**k it!