Nowadays, Facebook is more and more a forum for opinions rather than a social circle. There are more Buzzfeed articles, blogs that have gone viral, political banter and Memes than anything else. (I am fully aware that by posting this blog I am contributing to this epidemic - oh well)

Luckily it’s fun to read “25 things you and your best friend do that mean you are best friends for life” and be a part of the 30,000 sharers because your bestie HAS to know that other people are as weird as you two. Unfortunately, some of these viral posts cause more damage than laughs.

I saw a Meme on Facebook the other day that something around 10.1K people had liked (probably a wrong figure-my memory is just not that good) that said something along the lines of “Curves: because no one wants to cuddle a stick.”

We can add this meme to the other catchy quips I have seen floating around on Facebook and Pinterest, such as:

“Real men love curves”
“Only dogs like bones”
“Women without curves are like jeans without pockets…You have nowhere to put your hands!”

It was the straw that broke the Camel’s back for me on this new campaign to change body image.

I understand that this stems from the crusade to transform how society views the female body and I equally understand how enticing these words sound to a generation that has been bombarded with unrealistic standards of beauty leaving women feeling unworthy and inferior.

My generation is witness to and a part of the much needed movement to leave the mentality that a certain size equates beauty. People like Kate Upton and Ashley Graham, J-Lo, Beyoncè and the Khardashians (Sorry its true) have begun to reclaim this idea of how size means very little in the realm of beauty. But the only thing these above statements accomplish is to flip the tables; once again pitting the “curvy girl” vs. the “thin girl” instead of letting us be what we are: just girls.

The worst part is that in all of these statements, worth stems from whether or not other people find us desirable. By sharing these, we are flooding people’s homes and minds with the notion “be this way because a man will like you for it” instead of “be the way you are because you’ll like yourself for it.”

I recently was talking to a guy who was explaining his “type” to myself and some other people. He said that he liked curvier girls with Kim K type butts and then used me in an example by saying “sleeping with you would be like sleeping with a rail.” I got upset but my friends laughed and said I needed to relax and who cares what he thinks?

They didn’t get it. But it hurt me because ever since I can remember, I have worried about my size and weight.
I was never overweight but that didn’t matter because I didn’t see the body I wanted in the mirror. The body I wanted was my older sister’s 5'2", petite, athletic body, which was a TOTAL lost cause because I was 5'6", had my mom’s skinny legs (‘chicken legs’ as I called them which kept me from enjoying shorts for years) and her *ahem* large chest.
Thankfully, I never took any drastic measures to try and change my body, but I spent ALL of my teen years feeling inadequate; obsessing over finding new diets, that I could never stick to, and going to the gym. I never wore tight tops because I felt like they outlined everything wrong with my stomach, (to this day I hate form fitting tops because I avoided them for so long and so they’re uncomfortable) my hoodie was my favorite article of clothing and swimsuit shopping almost always ended in tears. I would have never said it out loud but I was constantly telling myself I was too big and that I needed to lose weight because of this idea in my head that I had to look a certain way in order for others to find me beautiful.

Fast Forward 5 years and I have slowly but surely gotten to the place where I am proud of my body. Not all day, every day but most days, most of the day. I eat clean -most of the time (because no one can ALL the time, thank you) and I found ways to work out that don’t bore me and keep me coming back. More importantly though, I changed how I thought about my body. I worked my way up to confidence…and then it got thrown back in my face.

That’s kind of dramatic but that’s how it felt. Here I am finally feeling positive in my own skin and it’s STILL just not good enough. Of course my friends were right and I shouldn’t have cared about this guy’s type or whether or not he liked my “rail-ness”, but instead, I allowed for a moment to let myself feel like there was something wrong with me. I brought it up the next day again and everyone laughed it off because I should have taken it as a compliment. By saying that, he was in turn calling me skinny.

Mix this experience with the growing number of memes and blog posts like the ones above and I realized that people feel as if they can share these posts because at the end of the day, the people who are being made 'less than’ are still a size 0 and so they should be fine.

But that’s where they’re wrong. That’s where everyone is wrong.

Confidence has nothing to do with size…it everything to do with self-worth. And the worth we assign ourselves as females has nothing to do with whether or not we’re a size 0. It has to do with what we have decided to believe in what other people tell us is beautiful and this perpetual notion that beauty is everything. People think a certain size will make them happy because we have ALLOWED our worth to be tied to a number. In high school I accepted the idea that I wasn’t good enough because I wasn’t the skinniest girl, and 5 years later I let myself fall into the same trap for the reverse reason. It’s not the body; it’s the mentality.

Being a size 2 doesn’t make one girl feel perpetually confident in the face of comments such as “You’re not curvy enough" in the same way that being curvy and sexy doesn’t make Kate Upton feel any better when someone tells her to lose weight. Regardless, the message is, you are not good enough. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side…confidence is an everyday, uphill struggle at ANY size.

We have to stop adopting other people’s definition of what beauty is! We can’t all be tall and lean just like we can’t all be curvy. One is not better than the other unless we allow it to be. At the end of the day, the only opinion that matters is our own.

So, refrain from saying things or ‘sharing’ things that may make you feel better but simultaneously tear someone else down. Stop perpetuating the idea that we are worth more if we fall into the category of whatever men currently find attractive. We are women, we are beautiful and we all deserve to be loved, hugged and 'cuddled’ by a GOOD man (they can take their 'Real’ one) who makes us feel beautiful in spite of all those perceived flaws society keeps telling us we have.

“I am proud of the person I’ve become because I fought hard to become her”