At the age of 14 my eyes scaled glossy pages in teen magazines searching for a woman to become. Eyes widened and hopes held high that one day I too would be flawlessly perfect. The glossy pages of magazines were always soft on my fingers and deceptive to my eyes. It was the deception and the lies within the photo shopped pages that caused me to believe that I would never be good enough. My low self-esteem and poor self-worth caused me to walk down a path of self-destruction in hopes that one day I would measure up to the man made beauty that flowed over glossy pages. It was backwards thinking and my belief that self-destruction could give birth to flawless beauty which forced me to travel down the broken path of anorexia.  For five years I abused my body manipulating it into shapes that were foreign to my genetics. Reaching for products that promised to fix my flaws only to realize that at the end of the day my mask would come off leaving me broken and desperate for truth. My guilt and shame fuelled anorexia further and without me even knowing I had initiated a war on my own body and my own self, forfeiting who I was for something that I would never become. It is through this conclusion that I realized that if I did not turn from the lies and the deception that I would spend my life chasing after an ideal that I could never attain.

 I looked in the glossy pages in teen magazines searching for a woman to become but not once did I turn my eyes to the beautiful women in and around my life. The women which surrounded me every day looked nothing the idea of beauty that I had adopted to be true. The women in and around my life were unique, real and fearfully and wonderfully made. They had experienced the ups and downs of life and were open and honest with themselves and those around them. They were survivors of their life experiences and were victorious because they persevered through struggle and challenge. When I actually took the time to think about it the beautiful women in and around my life are beautiful because who they are on the inside which is of far greater value than physical beauty ever could be. The beauty that had surrounded me for my whole life was ignored because I believed a man made beauty to be of greater value then the natural beauty each and every one of us beholds. After a five year struggle with anorexia I realized that the glossy pages in teen magazines were never soft on my fingers, they were rough like sandpaper and on my eyes their deception caused me to be blinded by lies. No longer do I view the images I see on these sandpapered pages as beautiful or true but I view them for what they are; lies. Each and every day I vow to turn my eyes to the beautiful and vulnerable women in and around my life and I will always refuse to believe that beauty can be contained by a lifeless magazine.