Labels are EVERYTHING in the world we live in.

A lot of our identities and who we are depend on the things we wear and how we present ourselves to the people around us.

Being a teenage girl with access to the internet and all of the social media sites I could ever dream of, I’m no stranger to pressure from others to look and act a certain way. Since I was a little kid, family members and friends would tell me that I would grow up to be beautiful.

Honestly, I couldn’t care less.

As a little 10-year-old, I was a self-proclaimed tomboy and for almost a year I wore the same pair of bright orange tennis shoes while all of my friends were buying twinkle-toes and new Jibbitz for their Crocs (this was before they became a meme).

My point is, my appearance and being beautiful or pretty wasn’t that important. I’ve always liked being a little bit different. There are so many people out there and having your own identity is more important now than ever.

Now, I’m not immune to feeling bad about myself, we all have insecurities. But, in the grand scheme of things, letting how I look would take up way too much time that I could spend on doing other things.

My body may not be perfect, but I’m positive there are people out there who would like to have my body. Throughout high school, I’ve made a lot of progress with my weight and how I feel and view myself.

Whenever I make new friends or meet their parents, one of the first things I hear is how “cute” I am. After a while, this gets extremely old and I would rather start hearing more genuine and creative compliments.

Surely, there’s more to who I am to others than the fact that I have freckles and a weird laugh.

I love writing. Did you know I can say the alphabet backward? It just so happens that I have extensive knowledge about movies from the 1980’s and can recite exact quotes from them by heart.

Maybe if you’d look past the fact that I’m just another pretty face you’d be able to see that I’m passionate about a lot of things and can go on for hours about them. I bet if you looked past a lot of pretty faces, you would find more than you think.

People are really amazing, you just have to be willing to look past the surface to see what’s really underneath.