Portrait of Anna Victoria Moore, an artistic depiction of her life with Trichotillomania.

What do you do when you are stressed?

Do you eat? Cry? Get moody? Clean? Go to the gym?

For Anna Victoria Moore, a 20 year old (at the time of these photos) Atlanta based model, the answer is:

“I pull my lashes out”.

Literally.

Trichotillomania is an obsessive compulsive disorder where people that suffer from it have the uncontrollable impulse to pull out hair from their body. It’s estimated that four percent of the population worldwide have this condition which is hereditary and more prominent on women. Anna’s first trich episode happened when she was around four years old and since then she has learned to live with her illness.

When at age nine she started receiving treatment to manage her decease her family discovered that her grandmother on her father’s side also had it, but she had hidden her condition from her loved ones by using wigs and fake lashes her whole life.

Anna’s case of trichotillomania is not a severe one and she only pulls her top lashes, where in other cases people also pull hair from their heads, eyebrows, arms, legs, and even genital areas. She explains that when she is involved in stressful situations, she is filled with anxiety and unbearable tension and only finds relief from it when she pulls her eyelashes out. When she does this she does not feel pain, but experiences a sensation of all her worries fading away.

Her condition has affected her career as a model in multiple ways, from agencies refusing to sign her because of her illness to a make up artist in Greece calling her disgusting for not having eyelashes. Anna little by little feels more comfortable going out without her lashes and has decided to share her story in hopes of reaching out to people with her condition. She aspires to see more people in the media with trichotillomania and to inform society of this and other mental illnesses, and how people with different conditions can live a normal life.

It’s been six years since the creation of this series and to this day these images are still some of the most special images I have ever made. Since the first publication on the series on VICE Colombia I have receive many messages from people telling me about how seeing beautiful images that they could see themselves in made them feel less alone and better about themselves. I even received a message from a childhood friend telling me that thanks to the article she discovered her condition had a name, that she could do something about it bringing her a lot of relief.

This is why representation matters.

I’m inspired by Anna and her bravery to share her story and wanted to showcase it with a lot of care, respect and highlight the beauty in vulnerability. I am humbled by the impact images can have and just hope that maybe someday we will learn to see beauty in unusual stories and be bettered by them.

*This series was first published in VICE Colombia but I have gotten several request for a translation of this piece.

Special thanks to Piper Von Hoene for the make up artistry and creative collaboration in the creation of these images.