As I left for college this summer, I was bombarded with advice from my friends and family. Soe told me to study hard and get good grades, others told me to go out and party while I was still young. While the advice varied from person to person, some good and some bad, one piece of advice was constant. It was engraved in my head from my family, talked about amongst my friends, and plastered all over social media.

"Make sure you don't gain the 'Freshman Fifteen' when you go to college."

Though this piece of advice was brought up jokingly as so many people hear about the rumor of the dreaded 15 pounds you gain your freshman year of college, the fact that it was constant throughout all of the advice I received was what worried me. None of my male friends were told this, as it is just assumed that their metabolism will keep up with them throughout college, but females are less fortunate.

I began to realize that the people that were giving me advice, my friends and family, were more concerned with how my outer appearance would change rather than the knowledge and future career I would gain from attending this institution. Almost as if my psychical appearance had more worth than my knowledge and personality.

What a crazy notion, right?

Women are constantly objectified in the media to conform to a certain body ideal which seems to be the key to success and happiness. From actors to Instagram models like Kylie Jenner, women are taught and bombarded with social media saying that their bodies are worth more than their personality or profession. Women are conditioned to think that skinny = success, which is far from the truth. These women are so often photoshopped, but yet women still strive to reach these unachievable body types.

I thought that when I came to college I would leave the dreaded idea of the "freshman fifteen" behind and focus on being healthy as I train for my upcoming marathon. Yet, the subject continuously creeps into my conversations with my friends. I see it hanging over my shoulder when my best friend and I nervously look at ourselves in the mirror and tug and pull at ourselves, sucking in because we do not feel worthy of the space we occupy. As someone who struggled with eating disorders in the past, I can tell when others are feeling the pressure from society to look a certain way because I know too well the way that society can control women through media. Women are taught to shrink themselves and compete with other women by comparing their bodies to the others around them. There is a multi-million dollar industry that relies solely on our low self-esteem and benefits from making us feel inferior. It pressures us to compare ourselves to other women, to look at a girl in a magazine and say "I want to look like that" and stop at nothing to achieve it. This internalized misogyny only deepens the self-hatred and body issues that occupy so many young women from young teenagers to college students.

It's time to stop. Stop the comparison, stop the idea that women are only as good as their bodies are. Stop the idea that we are only objects and our self-worth comes from fitting into a certain size of jeans.

Start appreciating your body and your brain for what they can do. Appreciate that your legs can take you for miles on adventures with the ones that you love. Appreciate feeling your belly shake from laughing so hard with your closest friends. Appreciate when you get a problem right in math class, or teach someone a difficult concept. Love your body for its imperfections: the cellulite, stretch marks, scars and "curves". Every single thing that you see as an imperfection is what makes you uniquely beautiful.

So what if you gain a few extra pounds in college? You are not meant to look like how you did in high school for the rest of your life. What matters more is that you are happy and healthy, learning and experiencing as much as you can while you are at college. Memories are more important than the number on the scale, so go to Chipotle with your friends and make the best of these four short years.

Once you let go of the idea that you have to look a certain way, your world will open up to new possibilities that you couldn't have even imagined before. You won't spend hours comparing yourself to others, but instead, spend hours doing a hobby that you love or learning a new language. You will love differently and more deeply without limits. Your confidence will allow you to try new things and help you find who you are meant to be.

Beauty is not skin deep. Beauty is the confidence that you gain from realizing that you are uniquely imperfect, and that is completely okay.

So go out, be confident, and kick ass.