Creating Myself: How I Learned that Beauty Comes in all Shapes, Sizes, and Packages, Including Me - Mia Tyler
Oct. 27 2008, Published 7:07 a.m. ET
SPIT-SWAPPING IMAGE Mia's tell-all "On a warm spring night in 2001, a few months before my 22nd birthday, I prepared to end my life." So begins Mia Tyler's Creating Myself: How I Learned that Beauty Comes in all Shapes, Sizes, and Packages, Including Me. By the time of this grim opening scene, Mia, daughter of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and half-sister of actress Liv Tyler, was already working as a successful plus-size model. But depression, drugs, and addictions to self-mutilation and other forms of masochism continued to dog her. Spoiler alert: The journey ends in self-acceptance, with the five-foot-seven-inch, 180lb Tyler happy with her body, at peace with her mother's terminal narcissism and her father's unorthodox (and arguably non-existent) parenting.
But first we get to hear an honest and often hilarious rehashing of a quintessential rock and roll childhood, spent making out with dad's band-mates, discovering illegitimate siblings, and, of course, doing enough drugs to kill someone of a lesser, non-toxic pedigree. A few gems: