Netty Mirror

On acting, beauty and vanity.

One of my family's favorite stories that they like to tell about me is when I was very young, and we had moved into this grand old house with a long spiral staircase. Across from it was this gold-framed ornate mirror.

As in, the size of a full wall.

Apparently, as a young little girl, I would spend hours on this staircase and in front of the mirror.

Waltzing down the stairs, stomping up the stairs—performing, essentially—but all the while greatly enjoying my own reflection.

Sometimes, my mom likes to tell people, I would answer her back while looking at myself in the mirror, rather than at her, playing with ways I would respond, different tones or facial expressions…

This is why, for a time, I was nicknamed Netty Mirror.

I won’t lie and pretend like the memory doesn’t ring true. There is a lot about my childhood that I do not remember, but I cannot deny that there was indeed a rather audacious little girl inside of me who was determined to be on stage.

Determined to be seen.

Determined to see herself…

Netty Mirror was in no way a nickname I was proud of though, it stung.

I still feel a little pang of shame rise in my belly when my mom brings it up… a kind of “who do you think you are?” story that so many little girls get handed.

This story of shame is something I have worked hard to unravel within my psyche—a slow removal of the subtle tactics that had me shrinking or self-restricting. A kind of quiet, and sometimes unconscious, way in which our culture—and its people—keep us in check.

Part of the unraveling involves a very simple daily practice of meeting myself in the mirror.

A meeting and reclaiming of that same awe I had when I was a child.

This relationship with my own reflection is rooted in the deepest love and kindness. A relationship that has me, on the daily, brushing my teeth and literally gargling to myself, “Hey, brave and beautiful woman.” Sometimes, I play this little game where I “accidentally” catch myself in the mirror whilst on the loo, and I kid you not, gawk in surprise at what a sight I behold, lovingly (and genuinely) letting myself know, “Wow, what a woman you are!”

I believe my physical appearance—and, more importantly, my love of self—continues to be affected by this practice. By this innocent game of admiration. I believe it so much so that it is a pre-requisite for my clients to do, especially if they want to make their work or service more visible.

There is an undeniable conditioning within our culture that places a huge amount of value on the external shell in which we present.

What I have been fine-tuning, as it pertains to this shell, is: how does it express itself when the “beauty” stems from within?

When the beauty is not the size, or the colour, or even the form—but the frequency and light it emits.

We can all agree that there's a distinct difference between a beauty that has been manipulated and painted on, yet radiates an energy of insecurity or even hollowness, and a beauty that simply exists, honestly.

It has taken me time to come to terms with truly and fully claiming my beauty. Owning it. Revelling in it. Transforming the shadow of it—vanity—into its gift of magnetism.

Vanity comes from the Latin "vanitas," meaning "futility" or "worthlessness," derived from "vanus," which means “empty.” When beauty is only surface deep, it gets stuck in the shadow of vanity—AKA an experience of emptiness.

When I was 15 years old, I did my first official model test shoot with a rather famous photographer.

As you will see in the image below, yes, classically, outwardly, beautiful.

Internally though, in a lot of pain.

Terrified, in fact.

During this time of my life, and particularly with this specific photographer, I was in such a state of disassociation. I wouldn’t have known that that’s what it was back then, but there was this sense of always floating above my body. I often felt myself wandering out into the clouds, so very far away from feeling, and so very far away from loving what I saw.

I spent most of my high school days obsessing over my body. Whether it was trying to be thin and not grow into a woman with curves so my agency, Elite, would keep me, or on the opposite end, feeling like I was this strange gangly creature at school socials where boys would giggle or run away from me because of how much taller I was than them.

I was in no way “beautiful” in my mind, and certainly not to the boys of my age.

I remember one specific house party where I was wearing a JT sports bra that was way too tight and accentuated my pigeon chest (AKA protruding sternum). I now like to think of it as a “pro-formity" for my extra-large heart, but back then, this pigeon chest or “pectus carinatum” as the doctors called it, was one of the most humiliating parts of my teenage body.

It was especially humiliating because I had no breasts—the flattest of the flattest. At some point during the party, a girl in the grade above me hugged me and said, “Owwch, what was that?” She then proceeded to stick her finger into my slightly protruding sternum.“Why is it like that?” she cried, loud enough for others to hear and want to come check out my strange third boob.

I remember feeling so humiliated, the blood leaving my body and draining out through my feet into the soil beneath me. I was good at playing it cool though, like a marble sculpture, I went still and simply laughed it off with them.

Casually.

Cooly.

I was a “model” after all, and whilst everyone seemed to think I was this pretty, mysterious girl, internally, I was riddled with insecurity.

“No big deal,” I said, “loads of people have it.”

Truthfully, though, it was a big deal. I hated my bony chest. I hated that boys my age never showed me any attention. It’s probably why I started going for men much older than me - why my first real boyfriend was 21 when I was only 13.

When I think back to this little girl, I get tears in my eyes.

She was so desperate for attention, so desperate to be seen as beautiful.

My mother was beautiful.

We lived in a house that was incredibly beautiful.

My father, he was beautiful too. He was said to be the most eligible bachelor in Cape Town. He was a doctor and played rugby. He was tall and charming. It was no wonder that they matched and made babies. My mom will often tell me that she chose him for his genes.

It was true.

The marriage broke down shortly after her three kids were born.

I grew up in a home where beauty was both a blessing and a burden.

When I try to take myself back to those times it feels like I am paging through a magazine. And in many ways, I was. My mother always had magazines lying around. Vogues, W Magazine, Vanity… I would spend hours paging through those magazines, comparing myself to the girls in the images. Feeling this immense possibility that one day, maybe one day, that could be me.

I share all of this because reclaiming beauty—true beauty—and transmuting its shadow, vanity, has been a profound part of my journey.

When I moved out of home at seventeen years old, one of my not-so-secret reasons was to become a professional model. My original dream was to dance, to be on stage, but after a significant growth spurt, my ballet teacher told me I would be too tall to become a ballerina.

Something inside of me broke that day.

It was like she turned the lights off.

Dancing was where I found warmth and energy…

When I gave up on dancing, I gave up on that light. I went very cold, like that marble sculpture. A kind of petrification, perfect for my plan b as a model though.

Modeling was the perfect gateway drug. I was tall enough, thin enough, pretty enough. It fed me a false sense of power, a training ground in the art of seduction. Pleasing and appeasing came naturally—I had been groomed from a young age to look picture-perfect. Look happy, look moody, look sexy, look nice, look naughty… I could do it all unflinchingly.

Going from a small city like Cape Town to a city like London, was a rude awakening.

My dream of becoming a model quickly began to dwindle. I remember going to meet agencies and getting rejected, rejected, and rejected once more.

I was mortified.

And confused.

I had restricted my food intake for months. I had the right hip size, no bum, and a very flat tummy. I was tall. And I was beautiful, right?

Why didn’t they want me?

My local agent at the time tried to console me with the usual: “You’re just not the look right now. Better luck next time.”

As a 17-year-old, there was nothing consoling about this. I still felt rejected. I was still, clearly, not beautiful enough.

They say rejection is a redirection, and that certainly rings true. I redirected my obsession with modeling into my schoolwork. I was living in Edinburgh by then but was determined to get into a university in London. I wanted to be at the epicenter. It worked, and within a few years, I was graduating with a First Class Honours from King’s College London.

I probably spent more hours at the club—as in the nightclubs I worked at—than on campus, but somehow, I pulled it off. I worked four nights a week at some of London’s top nightclubs, from around 10 pm to 4 am, fully immersed in the underbelly of London’s underground debauchery. It all came to an end though when, at 21, I got on my knees—after another boozy, cocaine-fueled, two-day bender—and finally asked for help.

My marble sculpture was beginning to crack. I had finished my degree but had no direction or sense of purpose. When the nights ran dry the days became harrowing and I knew I needed to get my shit together.

The problem was I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life…

I knew I wanted to be of service in some way. I was curious about people. Especially the odd artistic ones I met at afterparties. I knew I cared deeply about the state of the world and had big feelings and big dreams.

I just didn’t know how to turn them into a “career.”

Luckily, my prayers were answered in the strangest and most beautiful ways, and teachers and mentors began to appear on my path. Those stories are for another day, but let’s just say my “spiritual” journey had begun. I dove deep into the teachings I now share—from shamanic initiations in North Dakota to herbalism with wise old witches. Today, I’m a doula and a lecturer in modern matriarchal studies as well as a facilitator of women’s circles. I never had a plan—I simply followed these intuitive hits again and again, especially when they led me straight into the fire, burning away versions of who I thought I was or should be.

Fast forward a decade, and I recently got back on my knees with that same ache. I turned 30 and lost a significant person in my life in the same year. A death that catapulted me into an existential crisis. Mary Oliver ringing in my ears, “Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Death really does that. It shatters your illusions and forces you to meet the truth of your life.

Of life.

I love my work and I do indeed live a curious and adventurous life, yet somewhere inside a small little hole had begun to grow… a kind of void I had been avoiding.

The shadow of vanity had started to rear her ugly head. Everything on the outside appeared perfect, but internally, a hollowness had set in. It wasn’t as vast as the one from my teenage days, but it was undeniably there. It left me unable and unwilling to continue what I was doing with the same authentic pulse and enthusiasm I had before. I was yearning for something more, something that came from that small little audacious girl inside of me…

Something like… acting.

Acting was another one of my “original” dreams. Being on stage—whether it was dancing The Nutcracker or playing the part of a crazy scientist— becoming characters, telling stories, entertaining people - was something I absolutely relished as a child - it also came very naturally.

I knew I could move a crowd. Whether it was to tears or laughter, it was a gift I had made good use of in my life and work.

Similar to ballet, though, my acting career was cut short by the “too tall” story. It was one of those careers—like singing—that always felt out of reach. You were either a promising future star who would 'make it,' or you were simply looked down on with pity.

Something in the story of Netty Mirror had also pushed this dream deep into my little girl’s closet. Over the years, it became further shrouded in shame, buried beneath all the “self-development” work I had latched onto that had me constantly questioning my “egoic” desires.

There is something about the cult of the online coaching world that has you lured into an endless spiral of self-doubt rather than “self-help.” Luckily, I never quite liked the taste of the cool aid and found myself spending more and more time with artists rather than the self-proclaimed gurus and spiritual hustlers.

I was not, however, immune to the martyr complex—believing that acting and the arts were not only a ridiculous career choice at 30 but also completely selfish and self-indulgent. Cue vanity. Especially when compared to my oh-so-righteous career in “healing.”

The "Who do you think you are?" story was still woven deep into my psyche, its whispers weighing on my ability to go after what I truly wanted. I had to work hard to quiet those voices. To let myself want something that, to many—but mostly to myself—still seemed so superficial, delusional even.

But I did.

I let myself dream.

I played with roles in the mirror, like my little girl used to do, slipping into different characters. And then just after my 30th birthday, I gave myself a gift—a gift of a six-month acting course.

It felt bold, almost rebellious. But for the first time in a long time, it felt right.

Terrifying, but right.

I was hungry for that particular flavor of fear—the kind that gives you sweaty palms, not from external danger, but from the danger of what might surface from within. I often tell my clients that when they smell that fear, it may very well mean they’re right on track. As someone who actively seeks out fear (freediver alert), I crave this kind of sensation.

I have a thing for meeting my edges, and oh, what an edge acting is.

Acting, I realize now, is essentially everything I have been doing over the last decade in my facilitated spaces, but culminated within you—using you, and only you, to express it, to expose it.

It is an exposé of you.

Of all that you have lived through, been through, breathed through. I find the deeper I dive, the deeper I unravel—a kind of losing of self, but also securing of self. For me, at least, it is going into the void I have avoided, going into the depths of any and all emotions, and allowing them to spring forth, unencumbered.

I observe how my body contracts when I am asked to play a role that carries shame or fear. How anger can sometimes feel so far away from me, and yet I believed I was oh-so-fiery and liberated when it came to my rage.

Acting has humbled me to my core.

It is quite ironic that something perceived by so many as shallow is one of the deepest and most difficult “therapeutic” practices I have ever been involved in.

I am being sanded down, opened up, hollowed out—prepared, essentially, to be a channel that can continually serve up truth. Here I was thinking I was so advanced with my decade of self-development work, judging the arts or actors as basic when in actuality, I was totally off the mark. Vanity, beauty, the outside shell of an actor is just that—a shell. It is everything that is sourced from within that makes a performance either emotionally moving or just visually appealing.

It is funny to me that for so long, I fought this yearning to enter into this craft for fear of appearing too vain or superficial. Netty Mirror still rearing her ugly head, afraid of appearing too into herself. I mean, who are you to want to invest purely in yourself, yourself as the art piece?

In a recent Hollywood roundtable talk on YouTube, one of my favourite actors, Adrien Brody, said something like, “What we do as actors is service. We are service men…” It struck me suddenly how true that statement was. Acting is service. And for me, it is first and foremost service to that little girl inside of me who knew she needed to be on stage or screen, who was lit up by the act of lighting up others.

It is a service that extends far beyond the limited judgments I had placed upon it. It is an excruciating craft. Not only emotionally, but physically and mentally. Between learning lines, accessing intense emotions, and then the longest hours on set—all whilst portraying a character on cue—it’s fucking badass.

I bow to the actor.

And while I am only just at the beginning of this journey, I feel a deep stirring of energy inside me. There is this sense that I am embarking on something that will serve me for the rest of my life. A craft that will only grow more rich with time. Quite like my writing… More and more, I am hearing of and meeting female writers and directors making movies that are determined to showcase women throughout the ages. No longer am I placed in the “too tall” category, confined by the small minds of casting directors or producers who could only ever picture me on the arm of the male lead.

There is a light that has come back into my life, and it is fuelled by the arts.

By truth.

“The first duty of an artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” – Toni Cade Bambara

I feel this quote tingling on the raised hairs of my arms and legs. Truthbumps that tell me there’s something here. Something in this innocent yearning to immerse myself fully in my own longing. In an inexplicable knowing that there is potential here for great magic. For a sprinkling of my own witchy fairy dust into an industry that holds so much power… so much influence. No longer am I focused on the outcome, believing you have to “make it” to pursue a dream like acting, but rather, I’m asking: How does stepping onto this path make my life more colourful, and the lives of others too?

I am excited.

Watch this space…