Age 24

When I look in the mirror I see a happy, healthy young woman. She's brightly dressed and confident. She takes care of herself and is comfortable in her own skin. This person is me, and I like her.

Only a year ago, a very different person used to stare back at me. Her malnourished body was swathed in baggy clothes, and her dull lifeless eyes could barely muster the courage or the strength to stare back at me. This girl was suffering from an eating disorder, and the mirror was her enemy. Even at her thinnest, this girl still saw herself as a fat person, a monster whom she hated and attacked. She spent years trying to destroy this person, this creature in the mirror. And she very nearly succeeded.

Luckily help was at hand, and she entered a treatment clinic for people suffering from eating disorders. Here she began to rebuild her shrunken self, literally and metaphorically. As she did this, the story in the mirror changed, and I started to see myself. Eventually I discovered that I liked that person, loved her for who she was, and I wrote a book about the process of self discovery that brought me to this conclusion. It's called Mariposa and it's available from www.chipmunkapublishing.co.uk.

That frightened, starving girl has since become a distant memory, and my perception of myself has changed. Curves are good, health is good. There are parts of me I like more than others, but no one can be perfect. Above all, I can accept and make the best of who I am. Today the mirror is no longer my enemy, nor is the reflection within it. In the mirror I now see recovery, an exciting future and a person who is special in her own unique way. I see me, and I like it!

Age 19

When I look in the mirror, I see a beautiful face, hot body. Not the perfect boob-waist-hip, but I love everything about me. I wouldn’t change a thing.

I would not change my smallish boobs, large butt, stubby fingers or straight, yet, obtuse nose. It all forms what I see to be the hottest girl in the world - though I am still coming to terms with the fact that not everyone can see what I see.

I am close to turning 20 and I have never had a boyfriend, never even been close. I have tried to take a step back from what I see in the mirror. I even thought I had a reverse image disorder, but no - I love me. All of me. My personality, my wit (okay, sarcasm) and my body. Just because boys in college have failed to see the beauty of me, I don’t want them to bring me down. Though I am scared everyday that I will one day look in the mirror and see what everybody else sees. I am scared that one day, I will finally give in to society and see something other then myself. I don’t know what that is, because for some reason I have been blessed with high self-esteem and it seems that I am invincible except for my heart where I longed to be loved.

I am strong, beautiful and I know it.

Age 21

When I look in the mirror, I see big thighs and a bit of a flabby tummy, but you know what - I think I’m beautiful the way I am!

Before I turned 17, I used to be a slim UK size 8…now I am a UK size 12. I may have been skinnier but when I look back, I was never happy. I never felt confident about the way I looked and I wasn’t the bubbly person I am today.

Up until recently, I’ve been obsessed with dieting and trying to lose weight - but even doing that made me miserable! Now I’ve decided to get over the way I look, and by doing so, I’ve started to notice what’s more important in life. I’ve focused more on my university studies and decided to take on voluntary work. I also take care of myself health-wise rather than obsessing about my weight. My weight is healthy so why bother.

I’ve also realized that I have a lot of good qualities that are much more important than any bit of cellulite or flab on my body. Life is so much better when you learn to love yourself!

Age 19

I'm about to be 20, and I really hoped I would've stopped thinking about these things by now. I have never had an eating disorder, but two of my closest friends have suffered from anorexia and bulimia and I feel guilty sometimes for being naturally thin around them when I know that putting on weight stresses them out. But the thing is, it stresses me out too.

Recently I really dislike my body even though it's a healthy weight. I just feel like my hips are lumpy and unattractive, like I'm too short to carry any extra weight. I weigh 111 lbs now, and at my highest weight ever I was 118. I am petrified of someday weighing more than 120 lbs. I know I'm not fat, but I'm not in shape either. My thighs have cellulite and I have love handles. I almost went back on Prozac even though it made me suicidal because my appetite was gone when I took it - I weighed 104 lbs and felt so thin and people noticed and complimented me. Now I feel hungry all the time.

The only parts of my body I like are my wrists and my calves, but my calves are even kind-of ruined for me because I've inherited really poor circulation and I have spider veins and scars and blotches. I can't shake the idea that models in magazines are normal no matter how many times I read that it's not true…I just feel like that's the right way to look and then I feel terrible. I'm a lesbian and at one point with my ex I thought, "God, my body is so much uglier than hers" and then immediately hated myself because she's anorexic and she was being so unhealthy at the time. One part of my mind knew that I wanted her to eat healthy and be happy and yet, another part was saying "she looks good!" even though her bones were jutting out. Body image is so fucked up in our generation.

Age 24

When I look in the mirror, sometimes I see my nice ankles, or my decent calves, or my pretty collarbone; but most of the time my eyes are focused on the cellulite on my butt, or the way my legs touch all the way down, or how I still have the pooch on my stomach that will never ever go away. I am 5'5" and weigh 130 lbs, but I still feel like I jiggle like jello when I try to run or jump onto a bed, and like my stomach is huge when I bend over to kiss my boyfriend or sit at a computer. My younger sister, who is about the same size as me, feels the same way. Our mother has always obsessed over her weight, going from 120 lbs up to 200 lbs and back again, and SHE has always felt fat because her sister was thin and beautiful. It is awful what we as women put ourselves through even though we know better. I am so scared that I will always worry about getting fat or not being pretty enough and that I will pass it on to my children. I would hate to make them feel like this, even unintentionally. I just read through the accounts on this site, and it made me cry to see the age range of women who aren't happy with themselves. I don't want to hate my body for my whole life.

Age 23

What I see when I look in the mirror? I see a body that has been through a lot - sports, diets, eating disorders, injuries, ups, downs, love moments, hate moments. My whole life is written within my body. Each muscle, each fat inch, each scar is a trace of the way I've lived and the goals I've achieved so far. If I can be proud of my story, than I have to learn to be proud of my body. Even if it doesn't resemble to the general idea of the perfect body, even if I don't get complimented for it as much as I would like, still I have to learn to be proud of it. It's a daily struggle - it's not a thing you achieve overnight. Still it is something I want to achieve.

Age 23

I see something different every time I look in the mirror. It's a mind game. I see my body change in 5 minutes from before to after I throw up. I see something different if I eat or if I don't eat. I see someone who is not really me. I see secrets and lies and emptiness. Then I see Jesus. And I wonder why I choose to live in the empty when He has offered the fullness of life.

Age 28

I am 28 years old, and I have had three children in the last five years - and nursed each for a year. No one really tells another what effect this has on your body. I am not quite sure if my stomach will ever go without having a big flap of skin hanging loose, like an extra appendage that just suddenly grew overnight. I will never regret having my sons, but what bothers me are celebrities having babies then walking down the runway three weeks later in lingerie. Can any woman possibly live up to that? And talk about getting people's expectations too high to ever be attainable. At this point in my life, I am just completely unhappy with my body, but feel so powerless to do anything about it.

Age 22

I have the same insecurities as another author about being "too skinny," but that's not my greatest insecurity. Perhaps if I was less focused on the hair on my body, my flat and skinny body would be my top priority. I'm not sure why or how it came about, but around the beginning of college my body hair became thicker and more widespread. Now I have a happy trail and thick nipple hair. It actually pains me to even write about it. My mom tells me that she'll help me pay to have laser hair removal, my friends have no idea and my boyfriend says he doesn't care. But I do. I care that my mom isn't comfortable enough with her own body image to pass something positive on to me. I care that in other cultures body hair removal is not a "necessary" part of social survival. I care that I know beauty is relative and in the eye of the beholder, but yet I do not feel beautiful. To this day I keep it despite the fact that I am uncomfortable. When I am feeling really insecure or tempted to remove it, I ask myself "If I were in a place where no one cared, would I still do it?" No. Besides, like I told my mom, once I remove it then I'll just find the next insecurity to focus on. At some point I have to stop. So hair I am, and I'll stay until my hate turns to acceptance and my acceptance to love.

Age 32

Two years ago I took a ballet class for fun - it was a great way to get exercise, and I've always loved to dance. But I hated having to look at myself in the studio's full-length mirrors. Wearing tight leggings and a leotard top, I was disgusted that my body didn't resemble the svelte, delicate form that I'd long come to associate with beauty. My stomach stuck out. My thighs were thick.

I remember that at around age thirty I noticed that I had belly fat for the first time. Nothing major - I just realized that my stomach wasn't that perfect (usually airbrushed) washboard that gleams on the covers of magazines. I was embarrassed to sit on my own couch in a pair of jeans, looking down at this extra piece of skin that I had been told in no uncertain terms was hideous and unhealthy.

I never realized how hard it was to fight the messages sent by magazines, movies, television and the beauty industry until I started doing it. As lefty-liberated-feminist as I considered myself, I couldn't shake the idea that my completely normal, healthy-sized body was ugly. It's a battle that I fight every day, every time I find myself harshly judging that image in the mirror.

I have one trick that seems to work for me. Right before I get in the shower, I look at myself naked in the mirror. I don't pose, I just stand there. I feel the texture of my skin, the soft fullness of those parts of me that society says are supposed to be smooth and hard. I look at my eyes, my hair, my moles - all of it real, unairbrushed, unmodified. In that moment, at least, I am able to feel beautiful. Not because of some arbitrary set of guidelines, but because my body is my own, and loving it in the face of so many voices that tell me not to is the ultimate act of joyful rebellion.