Lila Elkins

A glass castle bundled in an oasis of everything I’d been conditioned to define as beautiful laid before me in a garden of metallic Manolo Bhalniks and hangers of every clothing item that graced the pages of the past month’s Vogue. A pink cloud of powdery blush floated across the room causing the air to shimmer. I fluttered that day, metamorphosing into a butterfly that was utterly bewitched by the beauty this room of creation held. But the butterfly didn’t realize that her wings were too fat to fit through the door. That day I was thirteen and I was chubby and I had fingers that didn’t fit rings and a waist that didn’t fit the preteen sizes provided for me by stores such as Old Navy, Gap, or, God forbid, the sinning corporation of Forever 21 worn by a 7th grader. My mother’s comments about ill-fitting clothing and the emerging popularity of ‘one-size-fits-small’ brands—like Brandy Melville—didn’t help my case of being too large a person for Lower Merion society. Alas, I was enraptured by paper magazines and shining chiffon dresses, and heels, boots, belts, hats, tops, jeans, jackets, peplum skirts, blush, bronzer, lipstick, and anything a designer brand could slap their pretty label on. The second a glimmering envelope adorning my name arrived at the door I jumped with glee, my 100-year-old house creaking as I landed.

“It says I’ve been invited to a photoshoot, Mom!” I yelled through braced-teeth and thin walls.

Every year Vogue magazine invites thirty or so lucky subscribers to visit a single-day photoshoot set in New York City. That year, after emailing an uncle who knew an intern who knew an assistant who knew an editor at Vogue, my name was finally added to the list. I meticulously planned my outfit: a dark floral mid-length skirt with brown cowboy boots, my mom’s belt from Arizona, an olive green tank top, and a cream knit long cardigan with little hand knit flowers sewn onto the bottom. My mom wore brown jeans and a fanny pack.

The night fell into morning as birds mellifluously sang into my ears and it was time to take the twelve o’clock train to Manhattan. Gushing with excitement, I stepped through double doors a worker had led us to. Heaven, I thought. Beauty perfected by the hands of God. Skyscrapers of skinny women sauntered in heels that could stab me. Mirrors reflected large lips, and painted faces, paintings in progress, and a woman who even with no makeup could have been confused for a goddess. “Oh, sorry, ma’am, I must have confused you with Aphrodite, no please, my mistake.”

It was a dream, with every piece of Gucci, Dior, Chanel, Balmain, Balenciaga, Valentino just sitting there ready to be worn; a slinky girl slipped into a gown to my left, a blowdryer blared to my right, it was a dream; flowing fabrics and running people with clipboards, a table of strawberries left for the crew and people actually wearing sunglasses indoors, it was a dream; ahead of me, a line of models waiting to step on a scale to meet their daily mark… it was a dream… that left a bruise when you woke up. Suddenly a rickety current rippled through the room, causing my glass castle to shatter a little. The camera flashed and I jumped, feverishly squirming in my own skin. As she posed with a spotlight enhancing her weightless features, she moved like water, but I was drowning.

I recently found an old journal with a page dedicated to how to suppress someone’s hunger, and tips on how to lose weight fast. Something large swells in me when I read those pages and think about the day it began in the room of that photoshoot in the industry I had prayed to since childhood. When God turns his back on you, where the hell else are you supposed to go? So I didn’t leave at all. Instead I fell more and more into an obsession with fashion, makeup, mirrors, smaller plate sizes, apple cider vinegar, Smooth Move tea, toilet bowls, fingers, and throats. But they were all so beautiful. And even if I was decaying myself, flying low with a clipped wing, I still attempted to grasp a shard of the glass castle that was the beauty industry; forever holding on, tighter and tighter with a growing waist, until my hands bled and I was drained of every beautiful drop of self-love I had left. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

—Lila Elkins