I have struggled with my body image for much of my life. I was always a little chubby growing up-- not unhealthy so, but my body was just a little softer than those of the other girls. I didn't notice it a whole lot until the fourth grade, when the cliques really started to form in my mostly white, suburban elementary school. A lot of things came in to play then: size, race, class. Girls started talking about wanting to become models when they were older-- and how they were trying to lose weight to look like one now.

But I still didn't feel bad about my body. Sure, I was a little bigger than the other girls, and for lots of reasons, but I didn't want to be a model. I wanted to be a writer. It was a nonissue for me. Middle school came and, along with it, an interest in love. Or, you know, whatever that is for a middle schooler. I had a huuuge crush on one of the football players and he told me he liked me, too... But he would never be my boyfriend because I was fat and all of his friends would make fun of him.

That is when I started becoming quite negative about my body. I went through phases where I didn't eat much and phases where I ate everything in site because who cares? I was still fat. This continued for years. For many of those years, I struggled with depression. Halfway through college, I finally went to the doctor and was treated for it (along with a couple of other conditions)... But with medication often comes weight gain and, boy, did I gain weight.

I told you all of that to tell you this: The more weight I gained, the happier I became with my body. Obviously, I'm not telling you to go out and gain weight. But what I do want to tell you, because it is what I learned as a plus size woman, is that you have to love your body because no one else is required to love it for you. And that is a lesson for every girl. We live in a society where you can be too fat, too thin, too light, too dark, too tall, too short, too muscular, not toned enough, and so many other qualifiers. Right now we live in a world where it is still okay to tear other people down based on nothing more than appearance.

That needs to end. And the first step is loving ourselves and loving others as we are.

And I'm going to end this thoughtful Thursday by telling you all one thing, as cheesy as it may be: You are fucking gorgeous and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves.*

*I'm only kind of sorry for the language.