I don't believe everybody is beautiful.

There, I said it.

While I do believe that there are certain parts of my appearance that can be appealing, I am not pretty or beautiful or hot or whatever. And that's okay.

Why do we go around telling everyone they're beautiful, when a lot of the time it simply isn't true? Why do we openly lie to our youth, fill their heads with the thought that they are all beautiful no matter what? Scientifically, there are universal standards for proportionality and attractiveness that almost always hold true in our subconscious, so why do we try to cover our instincts with false compliments?

Is it because we're trying to make others and ourselves feel better? Most of the time, yes. But why do we feel the need to compensate so much for a lack of certain facial features? It's because our society, our media spends so much time idealizing beauty, an unfair, unrealistic idea of attractiveness, that we as people have been caught up in the obsession. Would we feel the need to call everyone beautiful if we didn't hold beauty in such high esteem?

For example, corporations don't spend millions on ad campaigns that say everybody has good handwriting. Media personalities don't take to Twitter every couple of days with some uplifting variation of "Everybody is great at sewing." Nobody feels bad about not being able to roll your tongue, and no one goes out of their way to reassure that person that they can when they obviously cannot. Why? Because society doesn't place so much importance on these things.

But what most people don't realize is beauty is just one of those things, too. We can all agree that being attractive doesn't make you a good person, so when stripped of all societal standards, beauty is just like the ability to roll your tongue. Attractiveness is just genetics, facial structure, relative height and weight, chemical make-up and hormones.

There is no doubt that self-confidence is essential to building character, but our way of building that self-confidence is deeply flawed. If all of our self-confidence is based on a lie, it will crumble in the face of truth. We need to build our self-esteem on character and love rather than the order of dominant and recessive alleles.

So, no, I am not beautiful. But I am smart. I am talented and hard-working and funny and ambitious. A loving sister and daughter. A high-achieving student. A (hopefully) good writer. These things are enough for me.