Her thighs are wider than an ocean; they jiggle like jelly when she walks. Her tummy sticks out; it’s soft and squishy like dough. She pinches and prods, looking for more imperfections in her reflection. Her legs look like a zebra, littered with stripes going every which way. She squeezes into the new jeans she bought, but they don’t fit. They’re far too small, constricting her every movement. 

    The gym is her new safe haven; she goes four times a week. She turns down meals and lives off of scraps. She’s losing weight and she’s proud. She wants to be as thin as the models in magazines, forgetting that those are not real people but are instead photoshopped images, warped so that they barely look like the original model.

    Makeup, she applies pounds of it. When she’s done she’s unrecognizable, what she forgets is that makeup may hide your face, but makeup cannot hide your personality.

    She stands in the mirror, examining. Her hips stick out, a valley between them. She counts her ribs; they’re now easily visible through thin layers of skin. Her face is sunken and hollow, a shell of who she used to be. Her hair is brittle and thin, like straw left out after a long summer day.

     She goes to the gym more often, sweating off the pounds. She refuses even the smallest scraps, but then loses control and eats everything in sight. She sticks her fingers down her throat, desperate to get the calories out of her barren stomach.

     Back in front of the mirror, her daily regiment. Poking, prodding, creating images of fat that doesn’t exist. At least the jeans finally fit, with room to spare. She sighs and looks up one more time. 

     The girl in the mirror isn’t me anymore, and I look at the monster that I’ve created.