We learn at a young age that being pretty and not being pretty are two different things. It’s not something our parents teach us; it’s something we, unfortunately, learn on our own. It seems to be engraved in our minds from the moment we learn to talk. If you’re pretty, you’ll be successful. If you’re pretty, you’ll have money. If you’re pretty, you’ll be famous. At a young age, those three things were what you wanted in life because you didn’t know any better.

I remember being in kindergarten, maybe even younger, and looking at myself in the mirror and saying to myself, “I’m so ugly.” I looked myself dead in the eyes as I said those three words, and I repeated them to myself. I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t pretty. I was not even 6 years old.

When you're young, being pretty is all you need to worry about. Even at such a young age, there were already beauty standards that I was aware of. I knew that I was different. I didn’t have long hair, I didn’t have nice, bright eyes, and I wasn’t one of the popular girls. I wasn’t able to compare myself to other girls, so I wasn’t pretty.

Flash-forward to middle school, in the height of puberty. Being pretty was everything that you wanted to be. Girls all around me were wearing expensive clothes and having their first boyfriends and their first kisses. Girls were getting validation from boys that they were pretty, and honestly, in middle school that's all you wanted. I, however, was rolling along with braces and a short bob haircut; I didn’t have extremely skinny legs and a flat stomach and chest that I thought boys liked. I thought those features defined what made a girl pretty -- what was on the outside.

Flash-forward to 2015. Beauty standards are still all around us. Unrealistic ads of slim models are plastered on billboards and magazines everywhere. But have you ever seen a heavier woman on the cover of a magazine? Why is it that magazines are always giving tips on how to melt off tummy fat? And why is it that when a girl thinks she’s heavy or fat, people feel the need to say, “No, you’re beautiful!” Since when was being heavy equated to being ugly?

What message is this sending to young girls?

It is the inescapable media that has molded this view of what beauty is in our minds today. These beauty standards are all that we’ve ever known. The media has told us that in order to be beautiful, we need to have a flat stomach, we need big boobs, we need a thigh gap, we need to not have hair anywhere, we need to have curves, but we can’t be muscular, because this is what it is like to be beautiful.

But was does it really mean to be beautiful? At a young age, and even today, I believed it meant it’s the outside image of yourself that makes you beautiful, but it's not. Female beauty has become so significant in today's society that we lose focus on what it really is.

Being beautiful means accepting who you are fully, both inside and out. To be beautiful, you don’t need to have the perfect body, you don’t need to have what the magazines tell you to have, you don’t need validation from the media or men or women.

Being beautiful is something everyone is born with.

Sometimes it might be hard to feel truly beautiful with the media all around us and society telling us to look and act a certain way. What's even sadder is that the media has indirectly told us that if we don't meet these beauty standards, we should feel bad or ashamed of ourselves. Let's face it, we can't all look like Angelina Jolie, but even she probably has days when she isn't feeling her best. Surrounding yourself with people who love and appreciate you for every ounce of your being is what can help make you feel beautiful, not listening to what magazines tell you to do.

Even now in college, I get self-conscious of my outer image; we all do. Sometimes I think my eyes are puffier than normal, or maybe my stomach is sticking out more than usual. We all have those kinds of days. Thankfully, though, I've become a lot more more self-confident than my 6-year-old self. Looking back on the memory, I feel silly that I thought that of myself at such a young age. Today, outer beauty has become so much more important, and it's upsetting to think that being beautiful has become such a concern.

Beauty is something that can’t be taken away from you. Never forget that.