And in my reflection I saw the light
Rachel Duncan was perfection. She always had bee, Her hair was kept in a sleek blonde bob, her clothes were immaculate, and her IQ just north of genius.
Rachel Duncan was beautiful. As she examined herself in the mirror, she couldn't help but admire the red stain of her lips, and the golden brown of her eyes. She'd always enjoyed her eyes in this lighting, where the colour transformed from the dark hazel mirrored in her countless doubles to a striking caramel. Daniel had once described the colour as unique. She doubted the irony was lost on him.
Her gaze traveled from her face to her neck, where her collarbone jutted out under creamy white skin. She's always prided herself on being paler than her counterparts. It somehow made her seem more graceful, delicate like porcelain. She ran a perfectly manicured hand over her protruding collarbone. When had that happened? It seemed only days ago that she'd studied herself last, but this time her thin frame had become skeletal. She counted the visible ribs on her side. Six. It used to be only four. How had this crept up on her? How had she wasted away without even noticing, her stomach becoming concave and her breasts shrinking to those of a young girl? She'd been exercising daily since she was 16, but it had never gotten out of hand. It couldn't. She knew how to take care of herself. But now…
Now she could not help but see herself in a whole new light. And unlike that warm yellow glow of her overhead lamp, this one was sickly and unpleasant. She saw weakness. She saw her constant workouts. Her carefully controlled food proportions. Her constant counting of carbs and her refusal to eat gluten. She saw a statistic, she saw an illness, she saw hundreds of ad campaigns aimed at young girls, both against and for the epidemic she now realized she was apart of. She felt common. She felt dirty.
She did not feel like the perfection she knew herself to be.
