That's not true. You see reflections on the glass and glossy coating screens. Your eyes try to focus on the stuff you see. If it focuses on the screen this would be the image displayed by the panel plus all the reflections. Trying to distinguish between reflections and what the panel is displaying can be very very difficult as some reflections can obstruct the view on the panel or make your eyes go nuts about what to focus on. They don't blend out reflections as they are part of what you're looking at. Humans can not look at both images behind each other and that's why glossy stuff is bad.Saying that usually you should not get as distracted by the glass/mirror image as the OP describes he is. Normally your eyes focus on the screen content and thus blend out any present mirror images from the glass, because those mirror images are somewhere out of focus behind you.
Try reading the screen when sitting in a room with TL-lighting like an office or a classroom. The matte screens will be much easier to read as the reflection of the lights don't obstruct the image on the panel behind the glossy coating/glass.
The difference between the matte display option on the MBP and the MBA are 2 elements. The MBA only has black keys, everything else is aluminium or grey plastic/rubber. The matte MBP does not. The rubber hinge area is black and not grey as on the old pre-unibody MBPs. The rubber around the aluminium bezel is black as well. They just take off the glass, replace the glossy panel with a matte version and put in the aluminium bezel. If they also changed the rubber around the bezel and the rubber in the hinge area it would have been on par with the MBA and the old pre-unibody MBPs. It's those 2 elements that make it look a bit off and ugly to a lot of people. If they used a black bezel or grey rubber people wouldn't have complained about it being ugly I guess.Do you think that the MacBook Air looks weird? It has a silver bezel and black keys.