I have had the privilege to be born and raised in Irvine, Calif., a city in the heart of Orange County. I am also incredibly blessed to be attending a university roughly 25-minutes away from home, and a 45-minute drive (without traffic and driving with a lead foot, of course) from Los Angeles, the land of music, the arts, and of course, one of the world capitals of the modeling industry. Being from Southern California impacts you more than you’d think, and it struck me like a baseball bat to the head in my junior year of high school.

It never occurred to me as a young child that I was a little bigger than most girls. As far as I knew, at age eight, I wore size eight pants from Old Navy, and at age 10, I wore size 10 shirts from Limited Too. Until I was around 12 years old, I never saw my body as a problem. Just after I turned 12, my mom pointed out to me that I had a “tummy”, this squishy, cushiony thing that sits on top of my hipbones.

Soon after I began observing the other girls in my middle school, and I immediately noticed that none of them had these “tummies”. Their stomachs were flat from top to bottom, and I didn’t know how! From that moment on, all I wanted to do was to look like them, and that was the start of it all.

Insecurity is one of the most silent, yet awful causers of pain in the world. It affects us emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes, physically. It’s a natural human emotion, and it’s a feeling that everyone experiences.

Today, the most overwhelming feeling of insecurity a woman can experience comes when she looks at herself wearing a bikini. It strikes hard when she tries on a size zero dress, but can’t fit into it. It comes when she looks at herself in the mirror and sees the muffin top, the arm flab, and the missing thigh gap.

And let me tell you, this is the most difficult aspect of oneself to absorb, and it’s the one of the most vulnerable states that a woman will ever find herself in.

Societal standards have changed several times over the last century. We’ve gone from curvaceous to thin, athletic to waifish, and thin to unattainable. The ideal woman of the 21st century must possess the 36-26-36 measurements of her bust, waist, and hips (respectively), which are proportions that very few women in the world have.

In high school, the scale became my best friend. I felt the proudest when I saw my weight under 120 pounds; I felt skinnier, I looked skinnier, and wow! Kate Moss was so right: nothing really tastes as good as being skinny feels.

The word “skinny” began to rule my life. By age 14, I wanted nothing more than to have slimmer thighs, a flatter stomach, and thinner arms.

I skipped breakfast every day, I did sit ups every day. Anything to make me skinny.

Skinny. Thin. Lean. Tiny.

Those four words and their synonyms began to govern my daily life. I’d wake up, and consciously skip breakfast, and then congratulate myself on how there are zero calories in my body, and zero potential for them to go into my thighs, butt, or worse, my stomach.

Every day in my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I always thought about how having a flatter stomach was the key to me looking beautiful. Eventually, “skinny” became a synonym for “pretty”, “thin” had developed the same definition as “loveable”, and “curvy” meant “disgusting” and “undesirable”.

After a while, I started to eat significantly less than what I ate when I was in middle school; half my school lunches, half my dinners, and I refused to snack throughout the day. Although I did lose some weight, I became weak, and despite having visible pudge on my body, I was malnourished and unhealthy, and although I looked good on the outside, my inside did not mirror that in the slightest.

I was 112 pounds, and just under 5 foot 5 inches at the end of my junior year of high school. I lost 15 pounds that year, and not the healthy way. When I came back from my Poland/Israel trip and Stanford summer program in the end of July 2014, I realized that the saying “it’s what’s on the inside what matters” goes beyond one’s personality. How can you expect goodness and health on the outside, and when your inside is deteriorating and desperate?

Going into my senior year, I developed a brand new mentality: learning how to love myself, starting with the body that God gave me. I am proud to say that this is the mindset that drives me to this day, and I want to spread it to the women of the world.

Ladies, stop obsessively counting calories. Stop mentally abusing yourself by convincing yourself that your body isn’t good enough. Stop comparing yourself to constructions of women in magazines and on billboards. Stop trying to live up to the near-impossible societal standards. Every woman is born to be different. Could you imagine how boring and uninspiring the world would be if every woman in the world was near six feet tall, had legs that stretched from heaven to hell, and had perfectly proportional bust, waist, and hip measurements? No two women have the exact same body shapes, so why compare yourself to the societally idolized one, when your body type is the one that you should be idolizing?

Even though this message is so commonly discussed in today’s day and age, it’s crucial that we do something about it. Think about it: right now, there are several young teenage girls across America who are starving themselves into the extents of anorexia, bulimia, and other fatal eating disorders. There are thousands of young women looking at themselves in the mirror with disgusted looks on their faces because their stomachs are not flat, and have cellulite on their thighs. There are thousands of young women in the world who refuse to go to the beach or pool in a bikini because heaven forbid someone sees them with their larger thighs and rounder stomach.

There is no one body type that is the “best” one. Whether you’re a model, a curvy girl, or somewhere in between, it’s your body. Love it. Take care of it. Own it.