I recently was confronted with a conundrum. One of my closest friends said she had gained 10 pounds and was radically upset. Why? Because in her mind, what really measures a person's beauty is how "skinny" they are. Now, I don't say this to condemn her for her mindset, because it's not just her. It's all of us. This realization upset me. I've always known we are a outward --appearance driven culture, but it's not always obvious just how bad it is. Why is it that some of the most seemingly confident and powerful women I know have often confessed to feeling wildly insecure because of their weight? Why is it at that 5'6"' and 110 pounds (yes, I just put my weight on the Internet for the whole world to judge) I have been told more than a dozen times to "go eat a hamburger?" Yet, those same people that tell me to go gain weight, obsess over their weight-loss. Here is my conclusion: that magic number on the scale that everyone is looking for and working for and obsessing over, it doesn't matter.

Your weight is not a measure of your personality, character, honesty, integrity, and the list goes on. News flash -- the number you're staring at in front of you that makes your heart sink, or the flesh you pull at in the mirror, doesn't make you any less or more of a women of character or strength. Sorry, Megan Trainor, having "all the right junk in all the right places" doesn't make you a better person. You can weigh two pounds or 200 pounds, and make an impact. The model in the magazine with the airbrushed skin, and the big boobs, and the perfect waistline very well may be a horrible person and you never would know.

Consider every girl-competition chick flick ever. I'm referring to "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,' "The Duff," "The Princess Diaries," etc. In all these movies who is the"bad guy? Answer: the perfect-looking china doll girl. Who is the heroine? Answer: the awkward, over-dramatic, imperfect weirdo basically every female alive identifies with in some way.

Now, why would the super skinny, perfect hair, perfect teeth girl not be the heroine if size or weight or outward appearance was what really what defines us? Because it doesn't. Taylor Swift showed this perfectly in her music video, "You Belong with Me." The girl the guy ends up with at the end of her video and at the end of every one of those chick flicks previously mentioned is the imperfect girl; the underdog girl, the one with flaws, that's the real perfect girl. Appearing perfect doesn't make you perfect. It just means you look nice. It doesn't mean you'll get the job or the guy or the life you want. You may get what you want for a time, but if getting to your perfect size or appearance means you loose yourself in the process, you won't be happy. If you have to become mean to feel pretty, you won't be happy. If you have to deny your body what it needs to survive to feel "pretty," you won't be happy. If you have to wear clothes you aren't comfortable with or act or talk a certain way to feel pretty, or hot, or sexy, you won't be happy.

Let's just stop all the nonsense, right now. Let's stop the big-girl bashing and the skinny bashing and the "omg did you see so-and-so she's gained so much weight" talk. Let's stop that every time you look in the mirror you only see the flaws. Let's stop the comparing and the wishing to lose this or gain that or make this look different.

Have you ever looked at a tree? All you really see are the leaves. That's what everyone looks at, the color, the shape, the size. But look between the leaves, look at the spaces in-between. That's where you really see the beauty. That is where the sunlight shines through. That's were you can see the clouds and the sky. It isn't just the leaves that make up the picture. It's the things that shine through.

That's how it is with people. It isn't your weight or size or shape that defines you. It's who you decide to be when no one else is watching. Blake Shelton sums it up perfectly in his song, "Who Are you When I'm Not Looking." He isn't asking her how many calories she ate that day or if she went to the gym. He wants to know how she acts, what makes her smile, what are her little pleasures in life she hasn't shared with him yet. That's more important to him.

Next time you look in the mirror and begin to criticize, next time you count the calories or step on the scale or start to compare yourself to some other person, stop. Just stop. Ask yourself, are you who you want to be on the inside? Are you patient? Are you kind? Is your jealousy controlling you? Are you genuinely happy with the way you act? Before you start fretting about the number on the scale, start worrying about the number of people you made smile that day. Because at the end of it all, when you fall asleep to never wake up again, people won't come to your funeral because you were pretty. People will come for who you were on the inside.