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I feel like the statement “No matter who you are, you’re beautiful!” only reinforces beauty as an ultimate goal. There’s no debating it has great intentions—it’s a wonderful thing to hear and a kind thing to say to someone. But as a person who has had very low points regarding my self image, I know that hearing “you’re beautiful” blanket statements just made me feel more isolated. All I would think was, “No, I’m not. This doesn’t apply to me. You don’t know me.”

I guess I have benefited more from accepting that beauty, though lovely in itself, is not the defining factor of a person; it is merely *a* factor. And I’ve learned that if it is a person’s shining quality, well, they’re not the kind of person I’d personally want to spend my days with.

So here’s what I want to say:

You may not feel beautiful—but you have been blessed with a beautifully unique soul, which grants you the opportunity to be intelligent, creative, kind, fun-loving, strong, and a million other things that can bring so much to the people around you. When you focus on those things, you can stop hating yourself long enough to realize that maybe you were being too hard on your appearance all along. And that’s kind of beautiful too.

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