People are undeniably beautiful.

Every single face in every single mirror is completely different.

As 2022 began, I made my cliche New Year’s resolution to “have more self-confidence” which in all probability will be my New Year’s resolution every year for the rest of my life, but I’ve really made it an objective decision to find the root cause of my physical insecurities and obliterate them. In all honesty, it’s completely unrealistic to believe that I can “get rid” of everything I don’t like about myself, but there are a few things I’ve realized, and I’d like to share with anyone who has days they look at the mirror and sigh in disdain.

Everyone knows that these picture “perfect” girls all over the internet have molded their figures, smoothed their faces, fixed their hair, whitened their teeth, all in unnatural ways to depict themselves as the “goal” and how a girl should aspire to look and although most of us have been told multiple times of these facts, it’s pretty much impossible to never compare yourself to these fantasy photos on the internet. It’s truly inevitable by human nature. We see. We compare. It’s detrimental to teens and young adults that are on a journey through personal development, yet we’ve all grown up believing that these qualities are what “make a person beautiful” so we MUST do whatever we can to look exactly like these models right? Victoria Secret Models go weeks with an extremely limited amount of food purely to represent this “perfect” image of what a woman should look like. I don’t know about you, but weeks without baked cheetoh puffs is simply not the move, let alone a glamourous life. This expectation that Beauty is pain is so twisted and has girls of all ages stuck deep in the quicksand of their insecurities. The lives of these models are what anyone who questions themselves after seeing them on Instagram “models” their being over, yet we fail to recognize that these expectations are unnatural, unsafe, and go against what our bodies are made for.

We’ve been conditioned since we were little that in order to be a proper “girl” we need to dress, do our hair, do our makeup, and act in accordance to meet this expectation but this is bibbity bobbity BS. If doing makeup and putting on a pretty floral dress makes us feel like the prettiest girl in the world, then I don’t see any issue whatsoever with getting posh. Oh yes. Give me some heels and mascara, and I will buy you an ice cream. The issue is when you can’t feel pretty without these things. Being able to recognize the glamour in our natural being is the MOST IMPORTANT thing a girl can do for themselves. Looking in the mirror should make us happy, definitely not leave a knot it our throats.

Your hair is beautiful: at any length, color, texture, thickness

Your eyes sparkle when people look at you

Your legs walk a million miles and tell a million stories

Your lips explore the taste of the world around you

Your nose recognizes the smells of your luminous memories

Your hands hold strength and grit

Our bodies are incredible.

As I’ve embarked on my “journey” to self-confidence, I’ve kind of been analyzing the people around me, mostly at the gym, because everyone at the gym is there for the same reason: to improve physical fitness in one way or another. Some people are stronger than others. Some people are fitter than others. Some people are younger than others, but a commonality that exists amongst everyone, is that not a single person perfectly matches this societal expectation that we are fed through our computers every single day and expect ourselves to look. We are all different with different experiences and we all have qualities that can’t be replicated by the prototypical model that jumps in our face as soon as we open the Vogue magazine. These models don’t represent a story that is being told. Don’t get me wrong, all the models you see are real people, with real experiences, and real imperfections, but they’ve all been processed in ways where you can’t read their stories from the callouses on their fingers and the toughness of their knees from the images that are given to us.

I would like to see myself as an ongoing chapter book, and any small “imperfection” is a demonstration of a segment or chapter in my life. If every book in the world was exactly the same, we would never want to read, so why do we expect everyone to look exactly alike? Our features represent beautiful pieces that helped our ancient ancestors survive, and all these different pieces over years and years were put together to create the bodies we are living in today.

That’s really freaking beautiful

Metabolic rates played an extremely important role for survival of our predecessors, and every scar and crevice we have on our body represents a story that is inexplainable and makes each of us unique. No one can recreate the beauty that is told by our “imperfections” and if we all saw each other in this way, judgement and insecurity would be healed. I can assure you that the model you see on a magazine doesn’t have a visible scar on the top of their head from jumping off the stairs while dissecting frogs in the seventh grade. Not my proudest moment, but definitely a story that my grandchildren will one day hear. Every wrinkle that outlines the features of your face represent an emotion that was invoked over and over again. The lines on your face are the connecting paths that bring all your experiences, thoughts, and feelings together, so why these lines create such an insecurity in our minds when they are a visual path of the accumulation of wisdom over years and years and years.

I can tell you why we should love ourselves for what we are, but the mirror will still reflect a face we sometimes don’t want to see, and we will still continue to doubt our appearance. The important thing that we can recognize is that all of our flaws are not seen as flaws to everyone around us and 11/12 times, no one notices the things we are hyper fixated on. The number of times I’ve forgotten to get rid of the extra eyebrow hairs, worried that someone would notice when in reality, it didn’t even cross their minds that there were floating hairs on my mid forehead is astronomical. Trust me. We didn’t even notice, until you pointed it out, and even then, we are not bothered, nor judging, nor care.

Look around at everyone. I’m sure you will find something beautiful about every single person on this planet. Being able to recognize the beauty in other people brings you closer to recognizing the beauty in yourself. It’s really cliche to say, “you are unique, special, and beautiful”, but trust me. You are irreplaceable, irreplicable, and irresistible.

So, go stand in the mirror and look at the reflection staring back at you. You are drop dead gorgeous. Every story written in our skin; every emotion in the lines of our faces; every dominant feature that makes a person stop and look twice to admire us as one does in a museum of art; everything depicts just how enchanting you are.

Gorgeous girl, go conquer the world.