“Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?”
My room is dark. I do have a lamp turned on, but I muffled the light coming out the top with a towel. I was trying to not wake my roommate who was sprawled across the bed and who had been gifted with no sense of morning urgency or the need to be productive.
The lamp itself is a strange contraption. It does not have a tradition lampshade, but rather concentric circles of dangling red plastic disks strung together. My grandmother had given it to me because she had no use for such an eyesore. I had taken it because I’m cheap.
I peer into the framed mirror propped up on my desk, widening my eyes and stretching my face. It’s a miracle I go outside everyday considering how ugly I am in the morning.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

The lamp casts the room in an eerie, red glow as if there’s a fire lit. The reflection in the mirror is covered in shadows. My skin looks okay, but only because of science. For when red light is shone over red objects, those objects fade away, soaking in the light and wearing it like camouflage.
It’s like there’s an indigenous tribe on the other side of the mirror, all of them dancing and laughing. Their drums thud in the rhythm of my heartbeat, their chants closer to animal noises than human voices.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

I pad down the dim hallway to the bathroom. There, everything is bright yellow and the mirrors stretch across whole walls. Here I can see my face is bright red, covered in little spots. The pounding drums become louder.

Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Makeup can be used only to a certain point. But for all the voices that sing its praises, there are just as many ridiculing in respond.
They say it’s fake. It’s a lie. Guys like the natural look any way.
But others say makeup empowers women, that it increases their confidence and lets them go out into the world with their heads held high and hair streaming behind them.
What then, is a girl to do?
We stay up late at night and have YouTube makeup tutorial marathons. We scour Pinterest for the perfect eye shadow color combinations. We raid store shelves in quest of makeup palettes full of tans, browns, and thoroughly uninteresting “naked” colors. We cover our natural beauty with the natural sold in bottles.
But no matter what I do, I look like a walking red blotch.

UGLY, UGLY, UGLY.

Claire never thought she would have an eating disorder.
During her freshman and sophomore years of high school, she turned her nose up at the idea. She thought, “It was stupid to do that yourself, to starve for your physical beauty. I’ll eat what I want and not think twice about it.”
But in her junior year, her happy relationship with food started to slowly die.
The high school years are terrible years in themselves. These are the years children believe they are adults. They go through a process of violent sorting that leaves most of us bleeding and quivering on the other side. Some say high school was the best four years of their lives, but I think they must be lying.
“It didn’t even start with my weight,” Claire said. “It started because everything I ate would make me sick, and it would make my stomach get really, really big, and it would hurt. I was super into caring about my stomach, and if I ate, my stomach would be bigger and I would look really fat. So I became insecure and started to think, ‘You can’t eat that because you’ll look fat. You can’t eat.’”
In retaliation, Claire started to restrict everything she ate. She went low carb. Super low carb. If she ate breakfast, it might consist of a single banana. Lunch in the crowded, teenage-soaked cafeteria was a small Tupperware container of vegetables. Dinner was a plate of air.
“I wouldn’t eat anything.”
“I lost a lot of weight, but I didn’t really see that. People would say how skinny I looked. I thought it was a compliment. But then I started to get depressed. I had struggled with depression in the past, but it started to be really bad. Now I know it was because I wasn’t eating. If you don’t eat, your brain can’t function properly.”
During Claire’s senior year of high school, she realized her body was changing in ways she couldn’t control. She noticed her hips, and instead of embracing the development of Shakira’s truth tellers, she suddenly became conscious of her weight.
“I really thought I was fat. I used to be so thin naturally. It was the worst thing ever. So for breakfast, I would get up in the morning and eat like a banana. And for lunch I would eat just a smoothie. Sometimes I wouldn’t finish it and then a lot of times I wouldn’t eat dinner. But if it was a certain day, I would just go out of control. I would just binge. Anything I could get a hold of, like twice a week. My body would just freak out, and I just couldn’t control it. I just had to eat. And I could not stop.”
Binging can be applied to many activities. Drinking, watching television, exercising. But binge eating is particularly ensnaring. For suddenly the tight bounds that a girl has placed around her diet have snapped. She is out of control, almost like an animal, wolfing down anything and everything edible.
Then she feels guilty, incredibly guilty. Sometimes, these girls may even force themselves to vomit to rid themselves of that unwelcome nourishment.
“I never made myself throw up,” Claire said. “But there were a couple of times I was really close, like after I would binge and think, ‘I can’t have this in me.’ But I never made myself throw up, so I wasn’t bulimic.”
“It was just extreme self hatred. I thought I looked so fat. I don’t know. I felt so uncomfortable in myself.”
“There was one day. I will never forget it. I was at my grandma’s house, and my aunt (she just says stupid things) said, ‘You look like you’ve gained some weight. You can see it in your face. You’re not fat, just a little curvier. To be honest, you looked anorexic before.’”
Claire was dismayed. “Oh my God. People are noticing. I look BIGGER. I look  F A T!”
Claire’s eating disorder soon had complete control on her life. If she even thought she might look fat, she shut herself off from the outside world. She shunned her friends and stayed in her room, safely wrapped under her sheets.
She only wanted to be a model. She only wanted to look perfect and thin like them. She wanted their happiness, and she was paying dearly for it.

It is said that the beautiful, fit, and slim body type portrayed in most advertising is naturally possessed by only 5% of American females. Models themselves run through the gauntlet of dieting and exercising so that they maintain their “perfect” body. The ball and chain of social pressure is tied around their neck, but nevertheless, they are tossed into the ocean of life and expected to swim.
Naturally, they often drown.
Essena O’Neill was an Instagram model. She had over 600,000 followers and every picture showed a smiling, happy, young Australian whose life, it seemed, couldn’t get any better.
But then one day she snapped.
In a video that quickly gained global attention, she confesses to the world, her face makeup-free but streaked with tears and her hair disheveled, that everything she portrayed herself to be was fake. Her Instagram description now reads, “Social Media is not real life.”
“I was miserable. I had it ‘all,’ and I was miserable because when you let yourself be defined by numbers, you let yourself be defined by something that is not pure, that is not real, and that is not love.”
She then deleted over 2,000 photos from her account that she felt were only self-promotional. She changed captions on other pictures to describe the real story behind the shots. One particular caption next to a shot of her posing on a morning-lit beach reads:
“Not real life. Only reason we went to the beach this morning was to shoot these bikinis because the company paid me and also I look good to society’s current standards. I was born and won the genetic lottery. Why else would I have uploaded this photo? . . . To make a change? Look hot? Sell something? I thought I was helping young girls get fit and healthy. But I only realized at 19 that placing any amount of self worth on your physical form is so limiting. I could have been writing, exploring, playing, anything beautiful and real… Not trying to validate my worth though a bikini shot with no substance.”
I myself often waste hours, late at night, safe under a blanket with empty candy wrappers spread around me, more being emptied by the minute, scrolling through endless image of perfect people, perfect people who hide their imperfect lives and broken hearts behind flawless skin and wide smiles. They torture themselves, not for themselves, but for a blood-sucking culture. 
And yet I am insanely jealous of them. Jealous of their pasted smiles and crying nights, their empty stomachs and burning muscles. Why? Because they have clear skin and a flat stomach, and to a shallow girl, that often seems to be worth any amount of suffering.

But no matter how horrible she felt, Claire was convinced her situation was fine. She thought, “There was no way I had a problem because I’m not skinny. I’m not super underweight. I’m not one of those skin and bones girls that represent anorexia. I’m not that. There’s no way I have a problem.”
She sighs and sits up straighter in her chair. “And there’s no way anyone would believe me if I said I had a problem. I wasn’t skinny enough, so there was no point in telling anyone.”
“I did tell my aunt a little bit and she told my grandma. They’re the only two. I hate that they know. It makes me very uncomfortable if people know about my problems. Are they now looking at me differently? And they bothered me a lot, asking,  ‘Did you eat?’ ‘Make sure you eat.’ Blah, blah, blah.”

“My parents have no idea. I don’t want to tell them.”

“A lot of my hair fell out. My nails got really brittle and broke a lot. I don’t have a period. I hope I can get it back.
Claire’s body was trying to attract her attention.
It was like her body was trying to call her, but she kept sending it to voicemail. After the tone, it starts talking.
“Hey, Claire? Would you mind feeding me? You know, eating food is the best way to get nutrients into yourself, and I kinda need that to function. But if you want to feel awful all the time, you know, I guess you can starve me and take away 25% of my weight. I don’t want to be pushy or anything, but I might shut down soon. Oh, and by the way, if you ever want to have children, maybe ten years from now, you might want to consider feeding me. But whatever you think is best. I don’t really want to be a model though, ‘cause I wasn’t really built for that, but whatever. You never really wanted to be my friend anyway ‘cause you keep hiding me under these giant clothes. I guess I’m too ugly for you. Sorry, gotta go. These hunger pangs want to talk to you too.”

“I don’t feel like I ever got really skinny, but I don’t really know. To be honest, I had this perception of myself—but I don’t really know if that perception was true. I was trapped in my own body and I just hated it so much. I felt like I wasn’t in control of it, so by not eating, I gained some control. But really I didn’t have any control. I was trapped in thoughts. I felt like the image in the mirror determined my self-value. It didn’t matter what I was like on the inside, what other characteristics I had. If I wasn’t skinny, I wasn’t anything.”
The mirror says many things. It has a Ph.D. in public speaking from the Academy of Lies. It so effectively persuades its victims that they sink deep into depression.
“A lot of it was mental. My depression got really, really bad. I had a lot of anxiety, and that’s something I still struggle with.”
“I was not happy at all.” She pauses for a moment, massaging her hands and looking at a corner of the floor. “I don’t like to think about that time.”

The image in the mirror has haunted the human race for as long as we were vain, which has been most of history. We have always found ways to look at ourselves and gaze on the features that either make us proud or depressed.
The earliest mirrors were pools of water naturally formed in springs or captured in clay bowls. In ancient, there was a story of a vain and foolish hunter who happened upon such a pool deep in the woods. I imagine he stopped by it in much of the same way I pass my reflection in a car window. I walk by and then stop. I look to make sure no one is watching. Then I sidle back and bat my eyes at the glass, lift up my lips and check my teeth, and collect myself like Sharpay by blowing a few raspberries, before continuing on down the street.
Narcissus had been hunting, chasing after a deer with a bow and arrow, when he happened upon a still, clear pool surrounded by draping vines and lush grass. He looked in and smile, his brilliant white teeth almost blinding him in the reflection. Already deeply vain, it didn’t take much for him to stop and smooth down his peacock feathers.
“Hello, handsome.” He turned his head to the left and winked.
Then for an awful a moment he thought there was something stuck in his teeth. But it was only a dark pebble. I can’t have that ruining my beauty, he thought.
He reached into the pool to move the rock, but as soon as his fingers touched the water, the pool rippled and convulsed, scattering his reflection.
“NOOoo!” Narcissus jerked his hand back and bit his nails. Come back, come back. The water slowly settled and his face again appeared, just as beautiful as before.
Narcissus stayed by the pool, day and night. He could not leave his reflection because it was just too beautiful.
There are other stories attached to this one. The nymph Echo, cursed to only repeat spoken words, falls in love with the Greek hunter and haunts the pool-side. But for our purposes, all we have to know is that he dies. Narcissus dies. The means is debated. Some say he committed suicide. Others say he simply keeled over because no mortal can only look at his reflection for all eternity with no thought of exercise, midnight snacks, or even a bathroom break. Another ending is that gods took pity on him (I don’t much care for the gods who were just as vain, if not more, than our conceited hero), and turned him into a daffodil, a flower that hangs its head in a continual state of misfortune, gazing at its own reflection in the mirror of water.

A Poem
Written by Claire while in high school

That reflection in the mirror;
It haunted her day after day.
It followed her every move
No matter how far she ran away.
That reflection in the mirror,
The sharp edge’s cut marks on her soul
It ripped and tore away at her skin
She never felt quite whole.
All the value she possessed
She placed in that mirror.
The slightest curve or imperfection
Made her worth disappear.
Standing in front of the mirror,
She spent hours picking herself apart,
Sucking the life out of her soul,
Ripping the joy from her heart.
That reflection in the mirror;
It became what defined her,
Not if she was smart or caring,
Not the quality of her character.
That reflection in the mirror.
It was the only thing she saw.
Everything else was a blur,
Except for every little mark or flaw
Nothing mattered. Nothing
Except for that reflection in the mirror.
Would she live in this prison forever?
That was her biggest fear.

Claire found comfort in an unlikely place. She was following a girl on Instagram, a girl who looked polished and perfect, a girl who was thin and beautiful and genuinely happy.
“She didn’t eat whatever she wanted, but she ate an abundance of food, fruits and vegetables, and I thought ‘Wow. That would be so amazing if I could eat like that and still be skinny.”
The girl promoted a vegan lifestyle, a diet of fruits and vegetables, no meat, eggs, cheese, but Claire didn’t see any restrictions; she saw freedom. She saw the freedom to eat food again and be happy, to eat food and be skinny.
“I at first went vegan for superficial reasons. My family thought that going vegan was another form of restriction, but I eventually I didn’t see it like that. It was the best thing ever.”
The Instagram girl, however, was not the fairytale princess Claire thought she was. The Instagram girl was Essena O’Neill.

I had a stack of clothes in my arms, their price tags ignored because I just didn’t care at that point. I was tired of rummaging through the racks and telling myself, “No, that won’t fit. That’s not your style.” I was going to find clothes that fit and flattered, even if it took all day.
The dressing room was small, and as I shut the white wooden door behind me, I already knew this was not going to be a pleasant experience. I hung the clothes up on the wall hook and let the horrible dressing room Hunger Games begin.
As I stood in front of the mirror, draped with a dumpy dress, all I could think about were the billboards advertising liposuction. I was most definitely the “before” picture.
I don’t know if it’s the lighting, or that you’re in a hallway with six other woman all trying to find that one mass-produced shirt that falls just right, at least one pair of cookie-cutter jeans that neither squash nor sag your butt, and all while running your mental calculator at the speed of light. But for whatever the reason, I don’t think any woman ever looked in a dressing room mirror and thought, “Dang girl! You’re on FIRE!”
For mirrors are liars, especially dressing room mirrors, even though they are trying to sell you something.
The way mirrors are made is integral in affecting the way you see yourself. Most mirrors are flat, reflecting light in clean, sharp angles. But cheaper mirrors tend to be warped and distorted, tampering with your reflection along the way.
And I, the cheapskate, who will not buy anything that is not long-lasting, electronic, or touched by Viggo Mortensen and over twenty dollars, have a full-length mirror purchased at local grocery store. It likes to compliment me in poor lighting, but I know its true intentions.
Back to the dressing room: it was not fun.
I had entered that little open-top box with a mission and determination, a conqueror of the department store. However, history is not kind to conquerors. Alexander the Great and Charlemagne both died from fevers. Julius Caesar was stabbed by his closest friends and Napoleon met his Waterloo with stomach cancer. I was defeated by bad lighting and skinny jeans.
I didn’t buy anything that day.

Jane met a boy online, who thankfully was telling the truth about his age. They chatted quite a bit. She liked him. Coming from a somewhat sheltered home life, this small interaction set Jane into motion. She had to get this boy’s attention. She had to be thin.
“I wanted to be thin and in shape, but not for myself and not for my health, but so that boys would notice me because I looked good. And there was also a lot of negative media and just anything on the Internet that really made it seem that being thin is the only thing you can do to actually be desirable. It seemed like the girls who got the guys were always thinner, in shape, had big breasts or anything like that.”
“But it’s not just the media putting out unrealistic images; it’s also men’s reactions to them. You see it on campus. The girls who get the boyfriends are the thin, pretty, athletic ones, and that sends a message. It’s not that other girls don’t date, and these girls have great personalities, but the thin ones are the ones guys see first.”
“It might be because these girls are confident with themselves, and girls who aren’t are not going to want to be noticed. And so guys don’t notice them. So then it feeds into this vicious cycle of pretty, skinny girls getting boyfriends first, and it sends a message that if I want to find a boyfriend, I need to be like them.”
For Jane, it all began her freshman year of high school. She had started dieting and exercising, but she always knew she could do more, push the extra mile, say no to that tempting second helping. Soon, she dropped weight.
“I wasn’t making up for what I actually needed and that was just to talk it out more. I’m not from the most emotional family. I couldn’t just go up to my mom and say, ‘Hey, I don’t feel loved.’ I just needed the feedback. If people had realized that I felt so disturbed about my body image, they would have been more supportive. But I didn’t reach out or say anything.”
“There was always anxiety at family gatherings or leading up to them. I had to make sure I made some of the food that there was something for me that I wasn’t going to hate myself for eating a ton of. I thought it was fine for everyone else to be eating, but for me, it wasn’t. I would look fine on the outside, and people probably thought, ‘She’s eating. Whatever.’ But on the inside I was berating myself. ‘You know you’re not supposed to be doing this.’ It would be followed by a week of punishment.”
“I did something and I felt like I was sneaking it, and when you think it’s wrong to be eating that much food, you feel like you need to punish yourself for a really long time.”
“I never made myself throw up, but I definitely would take way too much fiber.”
“All the signs were there that something was going on, but I think my parents thought I was eating normally because I ate at dinner but not at other times. I worked out so hard, much more than they thought.”
“But I was turning orange because I was eating so many vegetables. My nails peeled and chipped all the time. Obviously my body was like, ‘What are you doing?’ But I ignored it.”
“I eventually stopped getting my period. I had started getting it when I was eleven, so at first, I was like, ‘What the heck. I’m tired of it anyway.’ But I had been pretty regular for six years and I couldn’t figure out why I missed it. It was getting later and later and it wasn’t coming. I talked to my mom, and she said, ‘Well, you are running a lot.’ I thought, ‘It will probably come.’”
“I didn’t get it for seven months.”

Dorothy Parker, American writer, was known for her sharp wit. She had “Excuse my dust” engraved on her tombstone. Her insults were two sided: “A lady … with the poise of the Sphinx but little of her mystery.” But the quote that resounds in my heart, as well as in the hearts of the many girls obsessed with Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, and Avatar Aang, is:
Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.
Have truer words been spoken?
Usually, I follow the example of Marilyn Monroe’s character in How to Marry a Millionaire, Pola Debevoise. Extremely nearsighted, ditzy Pola won’t wear her glasses in the sight of men. Her bumbling in the dark is humorous, but only excused because the curviness of Marilyn Monroe’s body far outweighs the sight of whatever horrendous glasses she decides to wear. Spoiler: she does eventually find a bespectacled man to marry.
My own curves do not resemble Pola’s in the slightest, and I have little hope of duplicating her happy ending. I’m also too cheap to buy contacts. Surprise there.
In an attempt to pinpoint my feelings about wearing specs, (and more importantly, gain Internet popularity) I wrote this on my Facebook timeline late last September:
“Disclaimer: I do not wear my glasses because I am a vain and foolish creature. Consequently, I cannot tell who you are if you wave to me from more than 50 feet away. The best way to get my attention is to throw something at me, preferably delicious food, and shout, ‘Hey beautiful lady!’ I also respond to, ‘Goddess of Gorgeous’ and occasionally ‘Empress Supreme.’”

My wit, I believe, is on par with Dorothy Parker’s.

Glasses are dumb. Who cares if you can’t tell whose face that is if you don’t have two red indentations on either side of your nose?
I would also much rather not read the chalkboard than constantly push my glasses back up. There’s no classy way to do it. It’s either tap on the middle and look like a snorting geek, or pull them up by the corner and look like a pompous know-it-all.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
I recently lost my glasses (not on purpose, I assure you), but I didn’t feel the need to rush and buy a new pair. They were expensive, and every pair I tried on made me look like a squashed gnome, the kind that would have seven library books tucked under his arm all on the quantum physics.
I did not want to look like a squashed gnome. I did not want to look ugly, ugly, ugly.

Jane was the smallest she had ever been the Christmas during her junior year of high school. Even though she realized how small she was, she was not going to relent in her strict habits and lose all the “progress” she had made. But winter is a hard time to keep up with a vigorous diet and exercise plan, especially when you are trying to keep it hidden. The holidays supply endless amounts of fatty, sugary, and health-busting foods, and the cold temperatures and deep snow keep runners off the streets.
“It was really hard on my psychologically, not being able to be active. I felt so depressed over things when I had to eat food or go exercise. I would walk all the time, but that wasn’t enough for me. It just got harder and harder and I started getting angry at myself. I tried to substitute other things in my life to make that better. I would go online more often or do things I thought would make me happier because I was just really suffering.”

One day during that Christmas season, her brother told her she looked good.
“I said, ‘I still have this fat pouch.’”
“He said, ‘That’s not a fat pouch. That’s just how people’s bodies are,’”
“I just brushed him off. He doesn’t understand me. He’s a man. It’s not his body.”
“I weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds that Christmas, and that was after eating Christmas food. For someone who is 5’7’’, that’s way below what you should be.”
“I was becoming an exercise addict where I felt I couldn’t eat anything unless I had worked out that day. I had been tracking my calories and I remember being so proud of myself if my net calories was something like 500. I was like, “Wow! I ate so little. Good job!”
The body has ways of indicating that it is in trouble, and while it may not shout, “Please, for the love of Pete, FEED ME!”, it notifies its owner in more subtle ways. After seven months of not having her period, Jane finally decided to talk to her mom and they visited the doctor.
There, Jane had an ultrasound of her ovaries. There was no cist; nothing was physically wrong. There was no reason why she should be having trouble.
But when she talked to the doctor, she learned the truth.
“Honestly,” the doctor said, “I don’t think you have enough fat on your body right now to even have a period. Your body can’t do it. You need to gain weight, otherwise you’re not going to get it back. You’re too small.”
The doctor gave her a diet plan, and if that didn’t work, Jane would have to see a nutritionist.
“I really didn’t want a nutritionist,” Jane says. “I started doing what she was saying and I tried to eat according to the plan. I did start to gain weight, and it was fast. Suddenly, my body was getting all these nutrients it hadn’t before. That was very depressing because suddenly I was going back to a normal weight and normal shape for someone my age and height. But I felt so fat and I wouldn’t believe it and I was so angry at everything and I didn’t want to deal with it. And that went on until the summer when I was able to run again.”
And then came freshman year of college. This is the year of change, the year hundreds of thousands of teenagers leave the safety of their nests because society has declared them to be adults whether they are ready for it or not, when mothers cry and children wave good-bye without a glance behind. This is the year friendships are formed and broken in a week. This is the year where everything is new and great and the people are awesome until you actually spend time with them. This is the year all the smiles are duct-taped on because we all want to make this the best four years ever but all we really want to do is run back to our Daddy’s arms and let Mom cook us mac-and-cheese with little bits of hot dogs chopped up.
Jane says, “When I ended up going to college, I probably weighed in the high 120’s. I felt huge. I was so embarrassed to meet people because I thought, ‘they’re going to think I’m so fat.’ Then freshman year, I probably put on a good 20 to 25 pounds, which was really depressing at the time, but I wasn’t overweight by the time it was over. I was considered overweight, but it was the biggest weight gain in my life and I was so upset. I also had a couple of guys reject me around the same time, and that certainly didn’t help.”

Men have a greater impact on women than they realize. As in Jane’s case, they can be part of the reason behind an eating disorder. We women want to feel loved, a desire that is beautiful and makes us unique, but the ways in which we chase after that love can be catastrophic. Some women bat their eyes, some puff out their chests, and some start desperately laughing every time they see a bearded man walk by.
Men also just say stupid things. They can criticize without even realizing it by saying, “You really going to eat that?” Worst of all, they hesitate when answering the “Am I fat?” question.
While the woman may be wrong in provoking the man with such a tricky question, the woman needs the feedback she is grasping for. She needs support, a strong group of friends on whom she can lean. Many women who have eating disorders do not have a strong support group, does not have friends who stay up with her until four in the morning, all of them squashed in a single bed watching The Notebook while they cry and tell each other every tiny detail about their issues with boys. They cry because John won’t text back, because David thinks that Jessica is prettier, and because they just want to hear, “I love you, beautiful.”
Jane still struggled with her body image throughout the first year of college, but nothing changed until the first semester of her sophomore year, a semester spent studying abroad in Gaming, Austria, a little town nestled in the foothills of the Austrian Alps.
The number of students studying in Austria was dramatically less than the number of students on campus back in the States. Jane felt self-conscious all over again. She wanted people to like her, but suddenly she felt “like I was the fat girl in the group again. I needed to be thinner.”
So Jane simply didn’t eat for the first 72 hours after arriving in lovely Österreich.
The differences between Europe and the United States are quite interesting. First of all, there is a beautiful tradition of history in Europe where ancient stories seem to be written right alongside modern ones. But more obvious differences include what to call the game where a black and white ball is kicked around, which side of the road to drive on, what electrical plugs can be used, and whether daily showers matter. Jane had issues with the drinking difference. In Austria, the drinking age is 18, as it is in many parts of Europe and the rest of the world. However, a person’s size, weight, and how much they have eaten greatly affect how a person handles alcohol. Jane found this out the hard way.
“I didn’t drink much,” she said, “but I ended up on somebody’s floor. I was unable to move or see straight.”
Jane didn’t want to eat in front of people. She thought the sight of her eating would reinforce the image of “Fat Jane” in her friends’ minds. The image was only in her head, but she didn’t see it like that. She found an escape in lying. When asked to go to the cafeteria for dinner, it was easy to say, “I already went to dinner,” or “I studied while I ate.”
“There’s things you could do,” Jane said. “You know a way you can lose weight really fast, and no one knows except for me. It’s always with you. You’re always thinking it. You could be more toned and exercise. There’s always something inside you that says, ‘But you could look BETTER.’”
But Jane was determined to change, and even though she began her ten-day break with this negative mindset, she told the two girls she was traveling with about her problem. She said she was going to view traveling and walking around Italy as a form of exercise and not eat, but they were not to let her do that.
“I didn’t know them before,” Jane said of the two girls. “One just sat next to me in class, but I didn’t know them. I liked how much everyone liked them, how fun they were, how little they cared about how they looked, and just thinking, ‘I want that happiness.’”
“We went on ten-day and my eating was never an issue.”
“I went in knowing that I had a problem. But I met two people that I really admired and really got along with. This was the start of becoming friends with people who weren’t really thin, but they weren’t overweight. They were very open, and when I found out their weight, I was like, ‘Oh, but you look fine.’ These people were the same as me and I started to understanding that I didn’t have to do this to myself. I came out of ten-day knowing that I want what they had and knowing was the solution was.”
“It’s not that the rest of Austria wasn’t a struggle to see myself the right way, but it definitely got easier. I just had to go to every meal, eat a decent amount of food, good food, right food. No one cared. No one cared if they ate a whole Milka chocolate bar in one sitting. They think, ‘I can too.’ When you start making these changes in your life, especially when you’re surrounded by people who give you feedback and not even realize it, but when you’re surrounded by all your peers and no one cares what you eat, you start to change.” Jane laughed. “This is going to sound like I’m doing drugs, but I’m not.”
“Sometimes I would feel like I was eating a ton of food, but my friends, instead of saying ‘Why are you eating that much?’, they were like, ‘Can I have some?” That reinforcement helped so much. It was okay to eat. It wasn’t bad. I felt better. People didn’t like me any less, and I felt more like a person, more like a human being.”

Claire was in awe of the lifestyle Essena O’Neill led. She completely changed her diet, and in turn, that changed her mindset.
“That was the first time in a long time I felt genuinely happy again,” Clare said. “I started eating better, my brain could function properly. It was the weirdest feeling ever. This was what feeling happy was.”
Claire was able to exercise again, an activity she joined before she had lost all her energy. She used to feel sick because she was unable to exert herself.
“Now I can eat all the fruits and vegetables I want and not feel sick. It started out gradually, eating more and more. My depression and anxiety got better. I was able to think more clearly. I realized I didn’t have to be the same size I was when I was a child. It was normal to get hips, to get curves, and being a size 4 or 6 isn’t fat, because that’s what I am now. I need to eat to function, for my brain to function. That is much more important than how you compare to a model.”
“It was definitely gradual because there are times where I would go back to it for about a week, but then I realized that it was so stupid. The biggest thing though, was when I was diagnosed with cancer in my thyroid. Eating disorders mess up a girl’s thyroid, and I know a lot of girls who have that problem. But I really don’t know because I didn’t tell my doctors. I didn’t tell them that I did this to myself. But that was when I really realized I needed to start taking care of my health. Being hit with something like that really wakes you up. I didn’t need to be stick thin. My health mattered much more.
“I don’t like the person I was when I had an eating disorder. I felt like I was very conceited, but not because that means you like yourself. I was self-obsessed. I was so obsessed with what I looked like that I wasn’t positive to the people around me. I wasn’t adding anything to anyone else’s life. Instead of obsessing over your own problems, it is better to just be healthy so you can help other people.”
Clare sits up much straighter now. “This summer was when I just stopped. I haven’t gone back to that kind of behavior, and I don’t think I ever will. Even when I don’t like myself, when I wish I had a different body, I won’t go back to starving myself. My health matters more than a size zero. I am happy now.”

“It never really leaves you,” Jane said. “It’s always in the back of your mind. I can’t say that in 20 years from now I won’t struggle with my body image again. But there are other things going on that I need to be focusing on. There was personality and spiritual things I need to change about myself, and I was directing that energy toward my body image. There’s something in your life that you need to change, but you’re fixing it in the wrong way.”
“Austria was definitely the biggest turn around for me. Spiritually, I came to know my faith better. I came to understand who I was as a person, what my role was. I started cutting out huge sections of sin in my life because those things weren’t making me happy. I finally understood who I was in God’s eyes, what he wanted of me, and realizing that as long as I’m exercising body, mind, and spirit, that’s all He’s asking me to do.”

The symbol for eating disorder recovery is very simple, yet very elegant. Some people see it as a heart, others the outline of a woman’s body. It symbolizes curves and motion, a healthy body. The smaller line is the eating disorder, and the larger, more dominant line, is strength and recovery.
Some girls who recover from an eating disorder tattoo this symbol to their wrist, a constant reminder.

It is a bright fall day. The trees are on fire with color. The green grass runs right up to the pale blue of the sky. But for me, it all blurs together, like a finger was dipped in water and smudged across God’s painting.
The beauty of a fall day is an earthly sight, an image that is only a reflection of an even greater beauty. It is warped by a world of sin, but it nevertheless conveys truth and goodness. I have to put on my glasses to see that, to see every leaf distinct from the next, the blades of glass quivering in the sharp breeze, and the small birds darting in and out of the trees.
When I look into the mirror, I see imperfections, a body that could be improved, or a face I believe can only be enhanced by a paper-bag mask. But I have a deeper beauty, a beauty no amount of makeup can enhance and no amount of doubt can destroy. It is the beauty of the heart and soul. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and we are held in the hands of a most loving God.
So I wear my glasses now. I think I have survived the acne apocalypse. But most importantly, I do not listen to the mirror anymore because the mirror hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about.