Disclaimer: All thoughts and feelings in this piece are my own. I do not claim to know those of others in my situation or similar ones.

Not feeling like I am good enough for today’s society is something I have struggled with and am still struggling with every day. Our society is so judgmental about everything from looks to beliefs. I am not the prettiest, smartest or most interesting person and I feel like I am constantly being looked at differently because of it.

I know that I am no Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, or Selena Gomez. I am not skinny or anything close to it. Some plus sized models are making peoples views change a bit for magazines and such but are views changing toward the average plus size person, woman or man? I honestly don’t think so. People who are over weight are still looked at as different and I think we are looked down upon. Of course not everyone makes me feel this way but it’s the people who do that really make me feel like I am not good enough. I want to be seen as a loving and real person and not like the overweight girl.

My views on some things are not the same as most. I am a Christian and want to wait until marriage to have sex and I sometimes feel like an outcast because of that. I don’t think with the way our current society is that people respect that as much. With apps like Tinder, Meet Me, Flicker and Mingle people don’t seem to appreciate a genuine relationship as much as they have in the past. Now I am not trying to discredit dating websites. It just seems to me that dating has began to start with a hookup and then onto the relationship. That is not what I want in a relationship. Sure I am young and want to have fun but just not like that. I am looking for more than a hookup. I want to be seen not as the girl who can not get a date but as the girl who respects herself and knows what she wants. I am looking for someone who likes me for who I am and not what I look like. For someone who will love me unconditionally no matter what but that isn’t what our society portrays.

I would say that I am a pretty smart person but that is if you are talking about school. I am book smart and sometimes being book smart doesn’t help me any. I don’t get into some of the ‘cool’ things that my friends do. I can not wrap my head around certain social concepts. I am a very to the point and straight forward person. I don’t get some of the seemingly simple things that others do. I don’t know that what I mean is that I am not smart enough but that’s the only thing I can think of to explain how I feel. I mean that even though I am really smart, people still somehow make me feel inferior and dumb.

Feeling not good enough and like I don’t fit in is hard. It is one of the things that holds me back in almost everything I do. I know that there are people out there who feel the same way. I know that I am not alone in this. My question is how do I change it? How do I begin to think that I am good enough for society? I know this deals with self esteem but it also has to do with our culture and what we present as “acceptable” or “marketable”. The plus sized beauty, the book smart person, and the person who wants an old fashioned relationship should be just as marketable as any other type of person.