Magazine Covers - Burn Victim Turia Pitt is Inspirational

Australian Women's Weekly decided to feature burn victim Turia Pitt as the cover girl for its July issue, and the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. 

Major women's magazines are typically covered by models, or celebrities. Hollywood actresses, superstar singers or athletes are photographed in the best lights, and then they are photoshopped and airbrushed to perfection.

Turia Pitt is not in any of those professions, but her cover is more inspirational than any I've usually seen. Both on her part, and also on the part of the Magazine editors.

Pitt, who was part of a panel for the mag's annual Women of the Future scholarship awards, was chosen for her inspirational story.

A spokesperson said the mag chose Turia Pitt, an engineer, athlete, author, and motivational speaker, “because she is quite simply one of the most impressive women you will ever hope to meet."

Pitt was competing in a 100km ultra-marathon in 2011 when she was trapped in a bushfire. She sustained burns over 65% of her body; doctors told her partner there was little chance she'd survive.

Today, in addition to her full-time job as a mining engineer, she regularly completes impressive athletic events — such as walking the Great Wall of China and swimming a 20km lake race in Australia's Lake Argyle — to raise money for Interplast, a non-profit that provides plastic surgery procedures for those in need.

Turia had defied medical experts' initial opinions with her recovery, and with her cover, she says she feels like the "luckiest girl in the world."

"For me, it sends the message that confidence equals beauty" Pitt told the magazine. "There are a lot of women out there who are so beautiful but don't have the confidence, and that's what gets you over the line."

Pitt's extraordinary appearance has already touched people around the world, including Hello Giggles blogger Margaret Eby who wrote about why Pitt could be a catalyst for real change:

Let Pitt be an example to other publishers of women’s magazines: Beauty comes in many vessels. Women need to see less gloss, and more grit. Less mascara, and more accomplishment. More women of color, more women with diverse backgrounds, just more. What if magazines started using women who didn’t look perfect on their covers? What if they started using women with unique faces and incredible back stories? Could we handle it? Yes, yes we could.