Over the course of my life, I've learned a lot of things. I went from singing the weather song on the rug in kindergarten to singing in chorus in fifth grade, and middle school years flying by. Finally, I reached a point I never thought I would, graduating high school. In those years, I met many types of people and began to understand how people work and why they do what they do.
One of those types of people everyone knows is the characteristic "it girl." The girl that everyone is always staring at and talking about, the girl everyone wants to be friends with. She's effortlessly pretty, doesn't seem to have any trouble making friends, and fits in with everybody. Every girl wants to be her. I never got to make friends easily like that, and for most of my childhood envied people who I thought got it all so easily. For a long time I wanted popularity- and in middle school I changed my clothes, hair and wore makeup to get people to like me.
Some of these girls were nice, and didn't really mean to be thrown into the culture of so called popularity. Others were menacing and cruel types of people who only associated with some worthy of their time. I came to quickly realize these differences. In high school, I discarded the idea of popularity as so many others had. Then, I saw more of these kinds of girls online.
The ones online were much more intimidating. It consisted of perfect contours, selfies that looked like pure art, perfect outfits, and tons of followers. Many of them were extremely popular on almost every social media platform, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, you name it, there they were. There was a time where all I wanted to be was one of these girls. Nothing seemed more appealing than being promoted, having fans, and being paid to promote and post on the internet.
It did cross my mind that these people may be extremely unhappy, I did notice a lot of them got online hate for just about everything they did. Comments like "look what she did here! shocking!" or "here's her real phone number! call now!" seemed degrading and insulting to these girls who were only just trying to live their lives. I realized "popularity" comes with a heavy price.
I started to feel like the only person left that had flaws. All I wanted to do was edit my photos to look like them and wear all the makeup they wore to look nothing like myself - and then maybe, I'd like who I was again.
Now I know. Nothing is worth giving up who I really am to make myself happy temporarily. I realized eventually everything comes to surface, and that you can not cover up on the internet. You only have one life and it is a waste to not love who you are as long as you are here - so I decided to make the most of the beautiful woman I am on my own, and I hope many others decide to do the same.
