As I was thinking about what to write this week, I remembered an idea that my mom gave me when we were talking the other day. There was one that stuck out to me when she said, "write about not realizing how beautiful you are." I liked where she was coming from, but how was I going to write a blog about this? I began thinking about how beauty standards play a role in my life. Do girls actually realize how beautiful they really are? I never really thought of myself being beautiful. I look at models like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, and how they're influencing how young girls look at themselves. Striving to be perfect is so prevalent in a young woman's life, and it's time we look at why.

Why is it that girls do not realize how beautiful they are? We are so concerned about our physical appearances in the age of social media. We HAVE to post the perfect picture, with the perfect background, at a perfect angle, and it has to get a certain amount of "likes." I can scroll through my Instagram feed and see skinny girls and bikinis, and selfies of girls with flawless complexions, and it's easy to forget that social media shows the "best" version of you. My mom always tells my younger sisters and I how beautiful we are, but I found it especially hard when I was growing up.

I was born with a port-wine birthmark on my face. This is a discoloration of the skin caused by a capillary malfunction. I was lucky enough that the birthmark was not in my eye, but it covered most of my left cheek. This birthmark has bothered me my entire life. Ever since I was three years old, I've been getting laser treatments in order to keep the blood vessels from growing. Although my birthmark will never go away, I do the treatments to keep it from getting too dark. It's bothered me for 18 years. I look in the mirror every day when I wake up checking to see if it looks any darker and wishing it wasn't there.

After 18 years, I've finally begun to accept my birthmark, and I think of it now as something that makes me different than everyone else. I think back to a story of myself in kindergarten when a classmate's mom asked me what kind of temporary tattoo I had on my face. I was extremely upset, and this incident has stuck with me for my entire life. I now look back on it and have a different opinion though. People sometimes don't understand others on the surface level or based on their appearances. I'm sure this woman didn't mean to hurt a little girl's feelings on purpose, she just observed things based off of appearance. This taught me from a young age that we should be accepting towards others no matter how they look.

As I came to college, I was extremely nervous about being around my peers without makeup on all the time. In high school, I always wore makeup to cover up my birthmark so nobody could see it. I know that my birthmark is something I shouldn't be ashamed of, but in this day with social media painting the ideal standards of beauty, it's hard not to look in the mirror and pick apart every flaw. I have been hopeful recently that our ideal beauty standards will change. There have been recent movements such as body positivity that show young girls that they are beautiful no matter what size or shape they may be. What I wish I could have taught myself a long time ago is that I shouldn't need makeup to feel beautiful, because as cheesy as it sounds, everyone is beautiful in their own way.