For the duration our lives we are told that we’re supposed to look a certain way by the media, our peers, and our families. Our clothes should look like that celebrity’s clothes and our bodies should be able to fit in them the same way that theirs does. I, like many other people, never lived up to these impossible standards and like many of those many people hated the way I looked for the majority of my life.

I feel like we think that it's normal to hate our bodies and to hate the way we look. I do think that it's something that everyone experiences from time to time, maybe some more than others, but I think that we should be asking why self hate is considered normal and what causes it rather than just writing it off as something that we should learn to deal with. Many times it’s written off as something that's not an issue that needs to be addressed. Yes, in theory it is normal to have negative feelings about your appearance but why is that?

I think that is has to do primarily with the media and the way different body types are presented to us. We see it every day, the people with the ideal bodies are the ones that are seen as most beautiful and most often. Nobody wants to say it but most of the time if those beautiful people had different body shapes they probably wouldn't be seen as immaculate as we’re told they are or as often as we see them.

Of course, there’s the occasional Adele or Rebel Wilson who don't have bodies that are going to be represented at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show that are sometimes in the spotlight. However, I can't ever recall a time where I've heard someone say they were aiming to look like either of those women. Which is a shame because I do know many people whose bodies are similar to those women’s bodies, and they're both beautiful and successful and really incredibly interesting people but for some reason we overlook all of that.

Then the next problem is the media takes people who don't even have unideal bodies but are maybe wearing something above a size 3 and makes them heroes. For example, Jennifer Lawrence. A little while after The Hunger Games movie came out and Jennifer Lawrence became very very well known she was on almost every late night show and talk show and social media timeline. Most of the time she was talking about food or eating. Which is fine, but always seemed a little strange to me because it was viewed as some kind of rebellious stick it to the man act. As a younger person in high school I was obsessed with The Hunger Games books and movies so I kept up with almost all the news surrounding her and I remember people thinking she was such a hero for so openly talking about food and being bigger than some other celebrities. First of all, she is not someone who looks like the average civilian. She might not be the smallest person who's walking a red carpet but she's definitely not the biggest and she definitely doesn't represent some kind of easily attainable body type. She likes to eat food and is proud, okay. Great. Making her some kind of role model for being able to openly talk about food and by having a tiny bit more muscle and body fat on her than someone else in Hollywood just adds to the problem, because I've never seen that women look unglamorous ever. It just kind of reinforces the need to look like something that is supposed to be easily attainable but isn’t.

Some people may think that it's a battle of thick vs. thin, but it's not. Everyone experiences these feelings and everyone's body is attacked by the media. I can't count how many times I’ve seen a magazine in the grocery store where the front page was plastered with celebrities in bikinis with “headlines” mocking their recent weight loss. It's not just a thing that women are ridiculed for either. When I say everyone experiences this, I mean everyone. Men are criticized for just having negative feelings about themselves alone. Basically, it’s something that we all deal with whether we’re willing to be conscious and open about it or not.

I used to hate the way that I looked and was really upset about the way my body was shaped and the fact that I’m probably never going to look like either of the Jenner sisters. This negativity that I had surrounding my self image really damaged not only my relationship with myself but my relationships with others. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I realized that none of those things actually matter. The way that I appear on the outside actually has very little to do with who I am as a whole. The media didn’t tell me this, my friends couldn’t tell me, I had to come to terms with it on my own and I think that’s what we all have to do. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still times where I feel like crap but I’m working on it every day. If we try to embrace the parts of ourselves that don’t have to do with our physical appearances and we continue to encourage the love of our other assets I think that we can all get better together.