Before you read this article please take a moment to head over to Don’t Eat Like Sh*t And 8 Other Ways To Get A Perfect Summer Bod Like Mine or else this article may seem a little off the wall. But, I have to warn you, you may want to just skim it because it’s really not worth your time reading the whole thing. Or maybe you will read the whole thing and get more and more annoyed as you go through the list like I did.

In short, the author of the aforementioned article goes on for nine bullet points describing the steps of how, if followed, you too can look just like she does! And what does she look like? Small, thin and blonde (I know this because her picture is her photo header to the article).

Once again, young women, “Most importantly college” women, are being told what exactly they are doing wrong and what they should do to fix how they look. As if young girls and women needed one more person to tell them that they aren’t skinny enough.

Although the points the writer makes to have a body just like hers are generally health tips and a workout routine, the overall tone of the article is a tad self-righteous and rude. Whether the intention of the article was to simply circulate health tips or more in the realm of tooting her own horn, the author simply provides tips of how one can do more to look better for the summer. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need one more boastful person telling me that I need to look more like them.

I’m not skinny by society’s terms, and constantly being battered by ads telling me to be skinnier to be prettier played a monumental role in my lack of self-confidence throughout my middle and high school years. So much so that I treated my body incredibly poorly in hopes of looking how I thought I needed to look to fit in.

Now I look back on pictures from my high school days and I simply don’t look healthy and I feel sad for my high school self because I know my body wasn’t receiving the right, positive kind of attention. And yet, whenever I read articles like this one or see ads idolizing thin and only thin, part of me still wants to look like I did in the past even though, frankly, I looked a bit gaunt because I just wasn’t healthy.

Weight has always been a sore subject for me, as is for a lot of women and girls. I don’t like to talk about it and I don’t like to think about it because I know I’m not as thin or toned as people think I should be.

Despite my own misgivings about my body type, I’ll be damned before someone tells me that I should look like them or aspire to be their level of skinny. I may not always be comfortable in my own skin, but I will never be so brash as to tell someone else what they should look like and what they should do with their body, and no one else should be doing that either.

And as for that summer/beach body Macey Joe Mullins is telling me I should be working towards and that should look just like hers? I have a body, it’s almost summer, and I live near a beach, so I already have my beach body. Whether my body looks like yours or not, mine has gotten me through a lot of tough times and has never given up on me, and my body does not need to look like yours to be worthy of walking around in a bathing suit.

People, it is 2018... I thought we were done telling people what does and doesn’t look good on a beach or in a bathing suit!!! I thought we were done telling girls what body type is the perfect body type!!!

I may not be as thin as some girls, I have thighs and a tummy, but I’m working on myself in my own time, and NOT because other people are telling me to. No woman should be made to feel that they are inferior simply because she isn’t as thin as someone else. And, honestly, no woman should ever feel the need to tell other women what their bodies should look like, let alone at any particular time of the year.

I hate to burst your bubble, Macey, but your body type isn’t my ideal and I won’t be taking your unsolicited advice to make my body look like yours any time soon. Actually, I won't EVER be taking it...