Around this time last year, I was at my best friend’s house talking to her youngest sister. She was an exuberant, confident freshman in high school at the time. We were talking about random things, and the topic of self-confidence came up. I would say I’ve never been a very confident person, but then I would be lying. Up until maybe middle school, I was almost arrogant in the way I viewed myself. Yeah, there were a couple things I didn’t like about myself, but the things I loved about myself far outweighed my insecurities. As I aged and things in my life changed my views, I became someone who wore loose sweatshirts and jeans in the summer because the idea of showing off anything about me made me feel uncomfortable. That was the basis of our discussion. She looked at me and she said, in almost a joking manner, that finding yourself attractive was just as easy as saying it. I was baffled by this concept. She told me about how, one day, she was just tired of finding herself unattractive. Standing in the mirror, she looked at herself and told herself she was beautiful, and as time went on, she began to believe it. I almost had to giggle. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I had heard in a long time. I really didn’t figure that creating self-confidence was as simple as looking in the mirror and saying “dang girl, you are fineeeeee.” It was a laughable idea.

We had this discussion half way through my senior year. This was a time in my life where a lot was changing. I was super stressed out about getting into colleges, how to pay for it, and just finishing up high school. Having self-esteem issues did not make my days go by any easier. I remembered the discussion I had and decided to do some research on the idea of self-assurance creating self-esteem. An idea that I thought was ridiculous had turned out to be something that a lot of people have had success with. I read a plethora of articles and blog posts about people using the same method, sometimes tweaked a little bit, but people still felt better after. Some people suggested repeating the mantra standing in a certain position in front of a mirror, some said it only works if you stand in front of said mirror naked so you can see all of you when you’re telling yourself that you are beautiful. After reading about it for a couple of days, I went to try it out. I didn’t go into it with an optimistic perspective, but I tried to keep an open mind. There’s this pose that is heavily endorsed: standing with your hands on your hips and your feet shoulder-width apart, kind of a “Superwoman” stance. So that’s what I did. I stood there standing in the mirror, staring at myself and repeating the mantra I was told to.

“You are beautiful. You are beautiful. You are beautiful.”

Of course, after the first time, I just felt really odd. I literally stood in the mirror, looking at a body I hated, and told myself three times that I was beautiful. It almost seemed comical, how much of a lie I just told myself. But I kept a small nuance of hope that maybe this would all work out. I did it pretty much every time I saw myself in a mirror. Even my reflection in a window got a silent repetition as I glanced at myself. As I did it, I began to see things I liked about myself again. While there were definitely times that someone would say something to me and I would feel completely defeated in my efforts, I kept going back to it. Fast forward to the summer of my senior year, and I was going out in public in crop tops and shorts, things I told myself for years that I couldn’t wear.

I get stuck on the “couldn’t” in that sentence. I guess I get stuck on that word in general; it’s been a topic of one of my previous articles. But in this context, it took me a long time to question it. Normally, I have a thing about authority and why I’m told I that I can’t do things. This issue was never one of those things that I felt the need to analyze. I just accepted that what society had told me about myself was true. No questions, no need to try and decipher why I accepted these things so blindly. Why would I question these things? I hadn’t met a single girl in years that didn’t have something about herself that society told her to hate. I figured it was just normal; everyone hated themselves as much as I did. But as I did this small exercise every day, I began to see that it really wasn’t okay. The way I was feeling wasn’t okay. But more than that, the way society was telling me how to feel wasn’t okay. And it still isn’t.

I went home over Christmas break. I saw the same girl who had made me see that self-hatred isn’t necessary. We were talking about clothes and I had pulled out some new crop tops I had bought from my suitcase. She looked at me sort of sad and said “I wish I could wear cute crop tops like you.” I sat there on the bed, silent for a moment, and asked her why she couldn’t. Her first response was reasonable; she couldn’t for religious reasons. She continued, though, and her response broke my heart. She stood in front of me and talked about how she didn’t have the body or self-confidence to wear a crop top. Now, I know what half of you are thinking, “just because they make it in your size does not mean you should wear it.” What you should be thinking is “how can we let a perfectly healthy fifteen year old feel like complete crap about herself because she doesn’t fit the standard we have deemed as acceptable?” I was so caught up in these emotions. I couldn’t get the image of her out of my head the year before, her voice as she told me that I needed to love myself. It’s so scary how all that can change so fast. While I had been getting better at loving myself, she began to see the faults in herself. It’s really not fair because she is perfectly fine the way she is. She was the one who taught me that it’s okay to love yourself. I wound up not really saying anything for a while; I was so overwhelmed in my sadness that I didn’t really know what to say. I took a couple minutes and told her my thoughts on it and what I’ve come to believe from this little experiment.

I told her that she was beautiful and that it tore me apart that she didn’t see it anymore, that the girl who stood before me had been broken down by society in ways that she shouldn’t have been. I told her that it hurt to see her this way because she was the one who made me see that I was beautiful. I continued to tell her what I had learned from what she had told me. I remembered the feelings of disgust and sadness I had when looking at myself. But it’s not a feeling you have to have. I believe that loving yourself doesn’t really have to do with self-confidence. I know from personal experience that there are some days when I struggle a lot. I’ll see something about myself that I’m still not happy with. I know I could definitely stand to lose some weight. I know my eyebrows are almost never on fleek. My hair is chronically a mess. I’m not confident in these things. But I see around those things. I see the good and I see how hating those things gets me nowhere. I see that it’s possible to love myself no matter what I’m not confident in. There are some days that I think I’ve made no progress, that I’m just a total lard and have no redeeming qualities. These are the days I have to remind myself of how far I’ve come. I think about the days when I would see my friends around in shorts and tank tops and I would be in a t-shirt, jacket, and long jeans because I wasn’t nearly comfortable enough to wear what even the weather permitted. Now in the summer, you can bet I’ll be wearing a crop top and shorts. I may feel a little self-conscious when I put it on, but I have to remember that I’m wearing these clothes for me, not for whoever may look at me. Sure I may get looks for wearing what I do, but I have to be feel assured enough in myself to not let them get to me. I definitely don’t have the figure society has deemed appropriate to wear crop tops. But crop tops are not a topic in self-confidence issues, they are a topic in state-of-mind issues. The minute you learn that you are in control of what you wear and how you feel in it, you realize that it doesn’t matter what society says. You may not have to feel 100% in those short shorts at first, but it’s not about feeling like a supermodel, it’s about feeling comfortable with yourself with what you have. Once you realize that you don’t have to be photoshop-perfect to wear something revealing, then wearing it is no problem.

When people tell me that I must have incredible self-confidence to wear crop tops and shorts like I do, I laugh. It’s always the people who don’t know me very well that make these assumptions. I am not very confident in myself. You can bet when I wear a cute crop top somewhere, I’m still a little wary. I still have those pings of self-consciousness where I feel that I’m not pretty enough or thin enough to be wearing what I do. Body positivity and self-assurance is something that isn’t easily conquered. Those voices, while they quiet down, never really go away. The ability to wear revealing clothes does not come with this overwhelming sense of feeling great. You have to have the state-of-mind first. And once you get there, it feels amazing.

I ultimately told her all this. I’ve told this to a lot of people. And I feel like this is something that needs to be shared. I’m tired of seeing all my friends feel like they aren’t good enough to wear certain things because society has told them so. It’s not healthy and it should be unacceptable. Knowing that society isn’t going to change its ways because some girls had their feelings hurt, we have to stand up and change for ourselves. Society isn’t willing to protect us, so we have to protect ourselves. And when one of us comes to realize a way of making it easier on girls who have their whole livelihood torn apart on a daily basis by a culture that tells them that they will never be good enough, they need to get the message to their peers. Sometimes you just have to look at your fellow woman and remind her that she really is beautiful. She probably won’t believe you; that’s my point. We don’t feel we are beautiful enough to even wear what we want to without being shamed or criticized. I’m not going to be one of those hard-core advocates and tell you that doing what I did will change your life, because it might not. You might try it out and be like “nah, this isn’t for me.” But hopefully something from this has given you the motivation to see yourself in a different light. Even if only one person reads this and sees their beauty as they should see it, then I’m satisfied. I hope this helps someone like my friend helped me. Because seeing the transition between who I was and who I am now still amazes me every day. I wish for all of you the power of self-assurance. There really isn’t anything like it.