When's the last time you locked eyes with yourself in the mirror and loved everything you saw? Oh, it's been a while? Or you've never done it? Unfortunately that isn't a uncommon reaction to self-image and esteem. If you fall into the majority you might look at yourself and think,

I need to be skinnier, I wish I had clear skin, I wish I didn't have cellulite/stretch marks, maybe if I had a thigh gap he would notice me or if I had bigger muscles, girls would notice me.

I've been thinking about body image for the last few weeks and several questions have crossed my mind. Why is it so easy to compliment other people but when we're forced to stand in front of a mirror and love ourselves, most of us have difficulties finding any fraction of love for the bodies we have? Why is it easier to notice the good in other people than to notice it in ourselves? Why are we usually so ashamed to look in the mirror for longer than five seconds?

I live by the beautiful Whiskeytown Lake in Northern California. In the summer heat, my friends and I are always taking trips to the lake. We pull up to the lake, lay out our towels and begin to disrobe and reveal our swimsuits. I've been to the lake with several different people, men and women, and the same thing happens each time. As soon as people take their coverups off, they start to tear themselves down.

I really shouldn't be wearing this swimsuit. My stomach isn't flat enough. I have cellulite. My muscles aren't big enough.

Men and women, across the board we tear ourselves up because we have lost sight of loving ourselves. We have a fear of not being good enough and fear that if people focus on us long enough they'll see our inadequacies. We avoid looking ourselves in the mirror because we feel if we look for too long we will be reminded of these assumed inadequacies.

Those inadequacies in our head? That's the thing. They're in our heads. No one sees us through the harsh mirror we see ourselves through. To someone else, you are Beyonce or Peyton Manning. If no one has told you reccently, let me be the first.

You are awesome and you are good enough.

I know you know this but for the sake of this article, I am gonna say it again.

The media skews information and retouches every photo. Even if they say it hasn't been retouched...it has.

The media makes us think we all should look like Cara Delvigne or Chris Hemsworth and even they are retouched in photos! So when we see pictures of seemingly flawless people needing to be retouched we think to ourselves,

She/he is borderline perfect. If she needs to be retouched there must be a million things that need to be retouched on me.

I am not a part of a magazine nor do I have any input on the retouching of photos but I would like to apologize to everyone that has felt pressured to look a certain way, based on these mega-fixed pictures.

They're not real. She/he doesn't wake up like that.

We need to get real honest on what we decide to call acceptable when it comes to the media. A lot of the time, the media takes a picture or news segment and makes it fit into a perfect fantasy world. We see it and accept it as real-world quality.

So what can we do to be more proactive in loving ourselves? One thing we can do as a society is see each picture with a grain of salt, knowing it's 99.9% made up. Once we see ads and glamorous photos through these lenses, I believe it will be possible to have more love for ourselves for this reason.

They're not real but you are, the media is too immature to handle real beauty.

Not saying the people in those photos aren't beautiful. They're beautiful untouched and the media can't handle that. Also we need to remember that each shape is beautiful. Skinny, curvy, petite, athletic. It's all beautiful. One shape isn't better than the other.

If you're a exception to the rule and walk out of the house everyday feeling like the fierce queen that you are, then keep doing you boo. While you're doing you encourage the ones who are struggling loving themselves the way you do. We need to be allies in this and call out the fierceness/strength/beauty in each other.

But if you struggle to love who you are, when someone takes a photo of you in that swimsuit and it makes you feel self-conscious, look at it and tell yourself all the things you love about yourself no matter how hard that is. Post the photo and let the world see the real and beautiful you. Look yourself in that sometimes daunting mirror and be brave enough to love yourself. As much as you give other people compliments like,

YAS QUEEN. Killin' it. You're so beautiful, I can't even.

Make sure you give yourself the same compliment becaues it's true. You're killin' it and it's time you recognized it.