by Rebecca Harrison
She looks into the mirror and pushes her fist into her reflection as the clear pieces of glass shatters to the floor she picks them up as if she‘s trying to pick up pieces of her shattered image, but all she finds when she bends down are the mutilated photographs of the perfect body and the perfect pair of eyes, the perfection that all girls are influenced to strive for. She hears a faint noise in the background and she turns to see what it is. She sees glamorous pictures of her favorite celebrities, she looks closer and she finds no sign of imperfection, she turns off the TV and grabs the bottle of her diet pills, she starts popping them in like she is a little kid in a candy store, sampling as much as she can except she is far from being a little kid and the emotion that the kid has is the only emotion she truly wants, happiness. How can she be truly happy when the media and TV tell her how ugly she is and how skinny she must be to be considered in the world that she strives to be a part of? Expectations fill her with self doubt, she measures her waist to see if the pills have taken their toll, when she realizes she’s shed an inch she steps on the scale and the ninety eight pounds shock her, but secretly make her happy. The twisted grin on her face is gruesome, but the look of her so-called perfect body is scary, it is scary to think that we live in a world where self perception and beautiful shining hair and skinny toothpick-looking girls are always chosen and favored over the real-looking girls that are truly beautiful but cannot realize it because of the high demand of flawless skin and the so-called perfection that no one truly has. The young teenager’s skinny body walks into the surgery room being put under the knife. When she looks at the results she is happy, but when she goes home she looks into the mirror of self doubt and again shatters the image of her reflection. Depression starts to kick in and overloads her system with thoughts of suicide and as she watches the classless girls on her television set, she thinks she has to be like them. She buys a short skirt and a shirt that barely covers her surgery scarred stomach, and she walks with some bits of pride, but she is drowning in her own self demise. She realizes negativity is the only thing being portrayed in these “ideal” women. Beauty is as deep as the ocean, some have waves of beauty and then days where they feel off. Some are hidden beneath the emerald gloss, and are not as visible as the surface of the water, but it is still beautiful. The teenager lost control of the live she once knew, and hides her face from the world, the media has won, but the ongoing battle with self image is still there one hundred and fifty per cent.