In the big, wide world of female beauty, the ever-illusive ideal has always been relatively the same. You all know the look: Tall, thin, white, and if there are curves, they must all be in the “right” places.

These have been the qualities most sought after in Western societies since the modern-day fashion industry has existed. However, now it seems that women of a different vein are emerging, beautiful and proud of their “untraditional” looks in the world of mainstream beauty.

Any girl who grew up not being stick thin knows just how tremendous the pressure to fit into the ideal body type is. We curvy girls have all tried to lose our extra pounds in a myriad of ways. I have not only been the thick girl who has hated her body, but I’ve seen other thick girls like myself look at their bodies in the mirror in complete and utter disgust. Our thighs were too big — they jiggled too much. Our stomachs, with their rolls and softness, weren’t sexy. Our arms weren’t toned enough, weren’t small enough. We all felt that seemingly unfixable sadness because of it. The media didn’t show our bodies, neither in movies nor in magazines. We got the message loud and clear: No one wants to see a body like ours. So, we did everything we could to lose the extra pounds that curved our waists and hips.

I began hating my body at age eight, when my mother told me to eat less, and to mind my stomach and keep it flat. I was made fun of in the fourth grade for being more than 60 pounds. I hid my budding body during middle school with oversized hoodies and baggy, boring pants. During high school was when I began “dieting," as well as obsessively exercising. I promised myself I would do whatever it took to make me thin —whatever it would take to make me beautiful. I wanted to be “skinny” because I had been taught that skinny not only meant beauty, but it equated to happiness. I, and the world that taught me this, was wrong.

During my senior year of high school, I discovered the online realm of “body positivity,” and with it, gorgeous women who looked like me — the real me. The me I had been brought up to hate.

I stumbled upon Barbie Ferreira on Tumblr. I found her blog when I was 17 years old and was captivated by her beauty. Not only was she breathtakingly beautiful, but she was thick! She wasn’t thick in the Kim Kardashian, Hollywood sense. She didn’t have a perfectly flat stomach with a huge butt and big boobs that somehow stood perkily on her chest. She was a real girl, like me. She had lumps and bumps, and they may have not been in the “right” places, but they were stunning just the same.

Through Barbie, I found Diana Veras, another beautiful curvy girl who had stolen people’s hearts. Not only were these girls striking, but they were also confident in their “unconventional” bodies. They showed me that it was possible to be thick and happy. Discovering this online niche of body positivity changed everything for me, and thousands of girls all over the Internet.

Barbie and Diana began to gain a lot of recognition for their unapologetically thick bodies as the years went on. The two originally modeled for American Apparel, and upon graduating high school, moved onto bigger and better things. Barbie signed to Wilhelmina modeling agency and Diana signed to JAG modeling agency last year, and with that, the two had begun to break down the barrier the fashion industry had built to keep girls like us out of the public eye.

As I watched Barbie and Diana gain fame for their curves, I suddenly felt proud of my own. Both their modeling careers had taken off, proving to society and the fashion world that thick girls could work it just as well as skinny girls. I follow both of them on all of their social media platforms, and I watch with pride as they tackle new challenges and accomplish new goals in the exclusive modeling world. Barbie recently released a video for Aerie’s “Aerie Real” campaign, which originally launched in 2014. The campaign’s goal is to challenge the modeling industry’s idea of what is beautiful by showing their models as themselves—untouched and real.

Also, this past week, Diana went nude for a shoot with "Paper Magazine." Diana was interviewed in the magazine, and told readers why it is she thinks body positivity is so important for the well-being of girls just like her. The photos, like Barbie’s video, show off every inch of her skin without shame. The images are raw and real, and it’s an amazing step for the modeling industry. With images like these, presenting such diverse and different body types in a positive light, it paves the way for a much more inclusive future for women everywhere.

Women like Barbie and Diana give me hope. They present a new future for the generations coming after me. They normalize what is deemed abnormal. They make what we are told is undesirable, undeniably desirable. Diana and Barbie teach not only women, but the whole of society, that there is more than one type of body worth looking at — that there is more than one type of body worth loving. Maybe if I had grown up with images and videos of women that looked just like me, I could have been saved years of self-hatred and sadness. Representation matters, and Barbie and Diana know this. They model for all the girls who grew up without any role models who looked like themselves, and they show us that we can all be beautiful.