First off, let me start by saying “thank you” for your entirely unsolicited comments about our appearances. At face value, your comments actually do provide us females with some happiness and actually do make us feel good about ourselves momentarily. But just know that your comments are entirely unnecessary, unwanted, distasteful nonsense.

The side-by-side photo above is two pictures of myself; the left was taken July of 2012, the summer before my senior year of high school, and the right was taken August of 2016, the summer before my senior year of college. The latter of the two pictures was cross-posted on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter a few weeks ago, after which I received private and direct messages on all platforms from several boys I went to high school with. Comments ranged from “I wish I would have realized how beautiful you were in school” to “You’ve come a long way since high school” and one short, simple, and sweet message: “IMPRESSED!”

Although I’m sure these comments were not meant to come off as contemptuous, they did and I’ve found myself ruminating on these messages in the weeks since I received them, reflecting on all the details these wannabe charmers failed to consider or recognize.

You overlooked the fact that the girl on the right has gained twenty pounds since she supposedly “came a long way”, and that she would do anything to get back the body the girl on the left has. You failed to consider the possibility that the girl on the right just went on a crash diet, forcing herself to eat only 5 saltine crackers and a hardboiled egg for a meal, in a desperate attempt to look like the girl on the left again.

You ignored the differences in the amounts of make-up the girl on the right has to wear to feel comfortable, not realizing that while she now spends thirty to forty minutes on her make-up, the girl on the left could have spent five minutes on the simplest look to feel just as comfortable.

You apparently failed to remember that the girl on the left had colored her hair blonde on more than one occasion and was told both times she looked like an “Asian freak” because of it, urged by many to “never try to be a blonde again” – yet the girl on the right just colored her hair blonde and now you’re “impressed” with her looks.

You must have forgotten that the girl on the right is the same girl you teased for her crooked teeth when she was the girl on the left, without realizing that in reality, the girl’s teeth have just become more crooked and crowded as the years have passed.

You must have forgotten that the girl on the right and the girl on the left, whom you belittled and deemed a “slut” for having larger breasts than most girls her age, are one in the same.

And you must have been too perplexed by how "far" she has come to realize that the girl on the right is the same girl you constantly ridiculed in public, the same girl you openly called a bitch in class nearly every day for voicing her opinion, the same girl you claimed would never be as attractive as her friends were. The girl on the right is the same girl who frequently came home from school crying, wondering if she really wasn’t enough and questioning why the boys at school thought so little of her.

While you may have been merely commenting on the evolution of my appearance, you didn’t stop to consider the changes that have occurred in my life - while you were busy comparing my current looks to the girl you once knew, you failed to consider the possibility that the girl on the right is proud to have once been the girl on the left.

You were undeniably too busy to consider that the girl in the picture may have done more than improve physically in the years since you’ve interacted with her, but lo and behold she gained some self-confidence too. She doesn’t care what you or your friends think of her anymore, and would never allow your opinions to dictate the image she has of herself ever again.

Women everywhere deserve to feel comfortable in their own skin, and when you come out of left field after not interacting with them since high school, arguably the most insecure time in a woman’s life, you’re calling back those insecurities she thought she had come to terms with, the ones that were locked away somewhere deep in her mind. You’re reminding her that she may not have always been the prettiest. You’re belittling everything she once was, everything she may be proud of. You’re making her question herself.

Millennial aged boys across the country seem to have this convoluted belief that they have a duty to slide into a girl’s DMs to validate what she has done with her life since the last time they reared their ugly heads. In the spirit of this article and who it’s directed at, I will quote my high school English teacher by stating: you are merely “spewing dreck into the world” with your unwarranted messages. You boys don’t get to decide when a girl has reached her potential, you don’t get to decide what images she should be proud of, and you most certainly don’t have a right to exacerbate the uncontrollable body negativity that is plaguing so many of your female counterparts today. Until you realize you have no right to an opinion on my or any other woman’s body – you are only going to be the

boy from high school, not quite yet a man. And with that, you should remember that a little boy has no place in a woman’s inbox, so kindly slide back out of the DMs and run along and play.