I believe that anything in life is possible. With self-love, perseverance, and right action, even my wildest dreams have, and will continue to come true. Relying on faith and patience, and the qualities mentioned above, I healed myself from a six-year struggle with bulimia as a young woman, graduated from college with honors in Psychology, and created a successful ten-year massage practice. These same qualities currently allow me to help create a world in which women can feel beautiful regardless of their size or shape; a world where girls grow up with beauty, self-worth, and power as their birthright. It may be idealistic thinking, but I believe that every thought and action that empowers women and girls with body acceptance and self-love will eventually add up to create a shift in the way women are viewed and treated in America. My sister, Stephanie, died in 1992 as the result of complications from breast implants she received when she was 19-years-old. Stephanie, too, was bulimic, and was instrumental in my healing process. Her death, at the ripe old age of 36, was the kick in the ass I needed to move from teaching body acceptance to one individual at a time in my massage practice, to doing the work on a larger and more public scale. In 1996 I founded a non-profit organization, The Body Positive, to work with adolescents on eating-disorder prevention and body acceptance, using multi-media educational tools. It became clear to me while researching a project for The Body Positive that new photographic images of women needed to be created and printed in response to the one-dimensional beauty ideal presented in fashion magazines. My idea was to take sample photos of beautiful, healthy women who live their lives without ever dieting, as role models for those women who struggle with body acceptance, and present them to fashion magazine editors to print in their magazines. The concept grew, and I formed Echo Peak Productions as a company dedicated to changing, through art, the way women?s beauty is defined in America. Eight of our photo-graphs are currently displayed at the Women?s Health Resource Center at 3698 California Street in San Francisco. Creating Echo Peak Productions was an intuitive plunge off a high cliff into unclear, yet receptive waters. It was also a plunge into debt for the production of our first project! I applaud magazines such as Mode and Radiance that are produced specifically for large women. My desire is to see a magazine in which women of all sizes and shapes are pictured, so that all readers can relate to an image that resembles their own body. Someday, if I have my way, all female shapes and sizes will be considered beautiful, and presented with only one label: Woman. If you are interested in helping promote the concepts of Echo Peak Productions, we are in need of the following: -Financial backing to produce our gallery show on cultural beauty issues for women; -Introductions to gallery owners, photographers, artists and others to help produce our show; - Introductions to magazine editors and book publishers; and -Feedback on our work and ideas for future projects. My work is dedicated to Stephanie, and is my commitment to creating a better world for my six-year-old daughter, Carmen. Connie Sobczak, 9/10/97