I have always been insecure about my body. I was more on the heavy side when I was a kid, but that never stopped me from doing what I loved in life. It was to the point where when I was 13, I realized that I hated myself for how I looked. I tried diets and workouts, but I was never proud of how I looked. I was always told that I was beautiful, but I never believed it. I would scroll on social media, see all of these models and I would tell myself that I would do anything to look like them. 

Most girls like me struggle with body positivity. I wanted to be skinny and fit the beauty standards of this generation. Unfortunately, we girls in today’s society think that we need to be skinny to look beautiful. 

Like I said, I have always been insecure about how I looked. It was to the point where I would believe the people who bullied me about how I looked. I started to bully myself because I thought that I was never good enough or never looked good enough. 

When I started my high school career, I was still insecure. I would walk in the hallway, wishing people would not know I was there. In June of 2022, my ex-boyfriend broke up with me because he said, “You aren’t good enough.” That was when I started to believe that I would never be good for anyone. I started to work out and eat a healthy diet. Despite these lifestyle changes, I began to realize that I was happy with what I looked like. I never needed to be skinny to be beautiful. I am happy with how I looked, and I was proud of what I wore.

When my sophomore year started, I was confident in myself and how I looked. I did not care about people’s opinions anymore. 

I am proud of myself. 

When you go on social media, you see all of these girls who are not skinny but they are proud of who they are and what they look like. One person who is the most influential to me is Lizzo. She does not care what anyone else thinks or says about her. I first discovered Lizzo when she started to become popular with her hit song “Truth Hurts.” I looked up to her, and she was always the person who made me confident in how I looked. 

There are so many girls who I know that hate how their bodies looks. However, there are also countless girls in this generation who love themselves for just the way they are. I have had people come up to me and say that I look so skinny and beautiful and that they want to be just like me. When girls tell me this I say, “I’m not skinny, and I’m not beautiful.” I believe the reason people think I am beautiful is because I am proud of what I look like, and I am not scared to show my flaws to the world. 

All girls should be proud of what they look like, even if they are skinny or overweight. Everyone should love themselves no matter what. If you love yourself for how you look, then that is all you need. You never need to please another person for validation. If they do not like you for who you are, then who cares? It is that person’s loss, and it is not that person’s life. We girls are beautiful no matter what. We should always stick together and cheer each other on instead of comparing ourselves to one another, trying to achieve a certain beautify standard dictated by someone who is not us!