Dead Girls Are Skinnier

In about fifth grade, I began my fixation of fashion. It started out with Seventeen for I liked that Just Bieber or someone vile like that (that I used to idolize) was on the cover once and the models wore clothing that I figured "the cool kids" wore. To be honest, the clothing I envisioned "the perfect Ann" would wear were quite banal. Print crop tops and skinny jeans or leggings. Things that showed off the "perfect body"of the perfect girl with the perfect boyfriend and perfect life. I just wanted to have that. As I have mentioned in many many other posts, I had serious self esteem issues. Not only did I find myself unbearably ugly, but also annoying, stupid, and basically just a bitch. These girls weren't any of those things to me. They had luscious long, straight, hair and I just wanted a piece of that. I wanted to be pretty like them. I used to tell my friends how gorgeous they were and how I just wanted to know what it was like to have guys think you're cute or not have  to look in the mirror and hate everything I saw. Lets remember: I was eleven years old. What eleven year old should have to not feel good enough because their reflection isn't perfection? What person at any age should ever go through that? Not only were the magazines I was reading effecting my self hatred but the Internet was giving me the same false perception of what a beautiful female should look like. Websites such as tumblr (Ew I can't believe that I was ever that annoying 11 year old on tumblr) and We Heart It were showing me these gorgeous girls that I knew I would never look like. To sum up my years of fifth and sixth grade, it sucked. I couldn't look in a mirror, I hated my body, and my grades dropped for I was so caught up in this sick cycle of self loathing just because I wasn't some fucking Seventeen model.
A lot has changed in the past two years. For starters, I became exactly what fifth and sixth grade Ann hated. I cut my hair short (I was obsessed with long has in fifth grade) and pierced my ears even more (I hated multiple piercings). My style became much less vile than the skimpy pieces of clothing I loved when I was eleven and twelve. Most importantly, I look up to people such as Tavi Gevinson and Hayley Williams and not some girl I saw in a magazine with pretty hair. Beauty still matters a lot to me but in the sense that it used to. Yes, I wear quite a bit of makeup and am slowly killing all the hair left on my scalp by straightening it so much but I like it like that. I don't need some "perfect" girl in some trashy magazine to show me who I want to be and as Carrie Hope Fletcher once said, "The girls in magazines don't even look like the girls in magazines.". To end on a happier note, an anonymous artist has been putting a large photoshop toolbar alongside highly edited advertisements with models in New York City subways.
-Ann
*Pictures taken from tumblr