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Being beautiful is everything right now, if you are not "perfect," society will reject you. People can be cruel and mean but you have to believe it for yourself. You can not give someone else permission to make you feel small, no one has the right to put you down. Unless you give them that right, don't give them that control over you. You get to decide what you wear, how you dress, how you do your hair, if you wear makeup or not, and so much more. Those decisions are up to you and you alone. Being confident is a choice we all have to make for ourselves. Yes, it can be hard and there will always be someone who will put you down, but they only have the ability to do that if you start to believe what they are saying. The world is full of mean people who aren't changing their opinions and aren't accepting that the world is changing and we need to be able to change with it.
Sometimes the person in the mirror can be our worst enemy, we are our worst enemy. We see things about ourselves that we don't like and we over-focus on them and think that everyone else sees them, but in reality, we are the only ones who notice. Looking at what the word perfect means puts a lot of perspective on what society expects from us. "Having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be." That is the exact definition of what it means to be perfect, how are we supposed to fit into that? Well were not and we shouldn't feel like we have to anymore. It is not our job to change for the world it is the world's job to change for us. We owe it to ourselves to feel as if we can freely express ourselves and we can be happy in our skin, because it's the only one we get, might as well cherish it. Being nice to yourself is something that people don't seem to understand is necessary. Being kind to your mind and to your body is necessary.
Social media has one of the largest impacts on teenagers and the pictures that we see can easily influence our minds and make us feel like we aren't good enough compared, but all of those photos have been edited and changed so they look a certain way, but it is not a realistic idea of how we should look. Comparing oneself to someone else is not good your your physical or mental health. It is harmful to yourself if you compare yourself to others and if you try and turn yourself into them, this can lead to undereating, depression, too little or too much physical exertion, and loss of sleep. There is so much that you can go through if you try and change yourself on the outside you can start losing yourself on the inside.
Loving yourself is a choice and no one else can make that choice for you, you have to be strong enough, brave enough, and confident enough, to realize you are perfect just the way you are, and you don't have to change a single thing about you, you are perfect.
Grace VerCauteren is a junior at Poudre High School, and she is very passionate about beauty and the standards that society has set up for us to live in. Someday these standards will change and we will no longer have to live a life for others but a life for ourselves.