What do you think being beautiful really means? All answers to that question are correct, because there’s no right or wrong response. Despite what society tries to make us believe, there is no “ideal” beauty. There are no exact measurements, hair color, eye color, or skin tone that make someone beautiful. Think about it… have you ever thought a guy or girl was really hot, but your friend didn’t see it? That’s because what’s attractive to one person isn’t necessarily going to be attractive to another. So how can we believe that there’s a standard for beauty? It makes no sense.

Weight loss companies and the cosmetic and clothing industries (just to name a few) seem to have made it their goal to get us to believe that we’re not good enough and that we need all sorts of things to be prettier. It’s not true! Companies sell us this idea for their financial benefit; profiting from the sale of weight loss products, make-up, hair dyes, and everything else we buy in order to make ourselves look prettier. I’m not saying that buying beauty products is bad (I used to dye my hair and I still wear make-up sometimes), but what would be bad is buying them because you feel like you have to look a certain way in order to be “beautiful”.

Remember, the girls and women you see in the media wear tons of makeup and are photoshopped and airbrushed in order to look perfect. When you see an image of a girl with what society says is a “great body”, you have to remember that people have different body types and everyone’s body is different – which is something else the media misrepresents. We’re all beautiful, whether we’re skinny, thick, curvy, or anywhere in between. If you want to lose weight, go ahead, but do it in a healthy way and do it because for the right reasons – not because you want to fit in. Being comfortable with yourself is really important, and surrounding yourself with others (including a significant other, if you have one) who accepts you as you are and who doesn’t ask you to change to look a specific way is important too.

-Erica