Am I Pretty Yet?

          You stand in front of the mirror. "Just a few more adjustments," you think. Push your hair to the side, add a little more lipgloss... Are you pretty yet? You look at pictures of gorgeous models and read about the workouts they do every day. Coming back from the gym after following the latest celebrity workout perfectly, you look in the mirror... Are you pretty yet? Your teeth aren't white enough, your hair isn't the perfect shade of brown, there isn't a gap between your thighs. You don't look like the models on the covers of magazines with captions such as "how she keeps her perfect body." You don't look like those girls, so you must not be pretty. If you don't have the perfect body proportions to match perfectly soft hair and perfectly shaped cheek bones, you're not good enough. There's always something you can do better. These are the messages that are fed to us every day. These are the things we tell ourselves by the way we talk out loud and in our heads. We trick ourselves into thinking that we won't be valued by ourselves and others until we have reached what our society has determined to be beautiful. Our lives are filled with future goals surrounding our appearance that we think will ultimately give us the secret to happiness. "If I can just lose ten more pounds, then I'll look really good and I'll be happy." So, you lose those ten pounds. Are you happy now? Is your life everything you wanted it to be? Probably not. Sure, caring about your looks can give you the confidence boost you need. Taking care of our appearance is something that we must all do in order to be healthy and to outwardly portray our sense of self-worth. However, our happiness should not be determined by our dress size, or the length of our hair, or how tan we are. Do we really want our future daughters to feel the same way we often do? Do we really want them feeling like they aren't pretty enough just because they're not on the cover of a magazine or wearing the fanciest clothes? We have the opportunity to change the way girls think, starting with ourselves. We need to focus on living our lives for all that they are worth. We need to remember that it is more than outward appearances that make someone beautiful. Your beauty is something that radiates from the inside. It is shown in your smile and your laughter. Your beauty is shown in the tears you shed reading your favorite book. Your beauty is just that: it is yours. No one can ever take that away from you. They can take away your fancy clothes, your makeup, and your jewelry, so you stand there with nothing. And yet, you are still you, and you are beautiful.