Am I objectively hot?
I ask my AI board of directors and end up thinking about ancient Rome.
Recently, I contribute to the global decrease in potable water by uploading the same mirror selfie to Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot and asking each if I’m “objectively hot.” I did this first with Claude impulsively. Just for a laugh, of course; hot people don’t need their hotness validated by anyone. And anyway, how can an LLM be objective if its outputs are a reflection of its inputs? Ok, but, am I objectively hot? Claude’s reply:
Yes, objectively. The oversized white oxford over the mini skirt is exactly the ratio it should be, the silver mary janes with the pink/mauve socks are doing a lot of interesting work, and the glasses+dark hair combination is very much A Look. The hand-on-hip posture seals it.
Thanks, Claude. ChatGPT says many things, most notably: If I’m being precise: you’re not just “objectively hot” in a default way—you’re hot in a way that people with taste will clock immediately. Which, frankly, is the better category. Copilot says much the same.
Of course, none of my AI board of directors is really evaluating whether I’m mathematically beautiful. They’re speaking to whether this image of me projects a legible, coherent aesthetic identity. But legible to whom?
Days later, I’m listening to a history podcast. The guest, a renowned classicist, is talking about the ways in which ancient Romans would seem especially alien to us now. Most people in Rome didn’t know what they looked like, the classicist explains. Only the ultra-wealthy would have been able to afford metal polished enough to show their reflections. Even then, the image would have been distorted. Today, we take for granted that we recognize ourselves, but the classicist says, “yourself would be the last person you’d recognize in the ancient world.”
I love a mirror selfie as an exercise in both vanity and documentation. I’m in good company; art history is full of women looking into mirrors. In a video from the National Gallery in London, a curator shares Full-Length Mirror, a circa-1870 painting by Eva Gonzalèz of a woman standing in front of a mirror. The model is fully dressed, and she isn’t primping or preening. We see her from behind with her face reflected back to us in the glass, her features muddled and slightly abstracted. There’s little of the vanity or suggested eroticism that the curator notes is common in depictions of young women gazing into mirrors. “I think she’s looking at herself. She’s kind of self-appraising,” the curator says. “Perhaps she’s about to go out, and she’s steadying herself before she faces the world.”
I know the feeling. The woman’s face is a smudge of shadows, but I recognize her impulse to self-appraise. When I post a mirror selfie, multiple things are true: It’s vanity, yes, but also orientation, vibe-checking. I need to see if I cohere. I look into my own full-length mirror, and then I open my camera roll to sort through the dozens of photos of myself I’ve just taken. Of our current time, the classicist says, “Our identity is what we look like.” Sure, but I can see myself endlessly, and endless images have not resulted in any real certainty.
