“I’m so painfully insecure,” – Megan Fox (Actor and Model)

“I do think I’m ugly half the time, it’s not like I live in this perfect world…” Madison Beer (Popstar)

“I used to hide my legs, I thought they looked like toothpicks.” Adrianna Lema (Victoria Secret Supermodel) 

“I never thought I was pretty” Karen Mulder (Dutch Supermodel)

One of the first messages that felt societally spoon-fed to me when I was just 7 was the importance of physical beauty.

I’ve spent the past 5 years of my life attempting to undo the crushing presence that perfectionist culture has had on my life. 

In no way have I completely eradicated my insecurity – I don’t think I ever will, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that susceptibility to inferiority is practically the human condition.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t grow from feelings of lack, specifically in the way that I look.

Growing up surrounded by social media and an abundance of perfect symmetry, flawless skin, edited noses or curves that look like they were crafted from a mold unfamiliar to my own has damaged millions of girls. 

But the damage is far from irreversible, which is why it’s important to spread one of the most important messages we can in a society plagued by perfectionism:

That the way you look is the least interesting thing about you.

Stop nurturing your physical beauty for the sake of fitting into society's unforgiving and remorseless gaze. Society will never warmly embrace you. Instead, it will turn its harsh shoulder on your futile efforts to appease an abstract, arbitrary concept of attraction; one that is constantly shifting. 

You are not your insecure thoughts – it is quite literally all bred within the confines of your own head.

In fact, you are your mind's endless capacity to love and to be kind. To seek laughter and experience all that life has to offer. 

Flowers DO bloom where you walk, actually, and not because of your weight or the mirror's reflection but because you smile and wave at babies and hold doors for strangers and compliment girls when their makeup looks pretty or their energy is as bright as the suns.

You are the knowledge you seek and your palpable curiosity. You’re your love for your hobbies and the insight you impart on the people you meet and the way you dance alone to music in your bedroom. 

You’re your pursuit of being good and your energy is worth a currency that’s conversion rate is one your physical body will never know.

You should remember to fuel your body, not to fit a mold, but because it’s a vessel for experience and for your soul that bubbles with passion and excitement. 

Just remember that your insecure thoughts aren’t you because there is already too much love and life and beauty in you to make room for fleeting negativity. 

To bound your impact to the confines of a body, skin or any form of physicality is to undermine the complexity and beauty that is your soul. 

-Sophia Rundle <3