In my life I have met many individuals, with different dreams, aspirations, and goals for their future. All of these individuals were perfectly capable of achieving these goals, and some of them did, and they are the happiest people I know. Also in my life, I have befriended some people who did whatever they could to be beautiful, to be skinny, or to be popular. I saw my girlfriends and my guy friends both go through individual struggles of acceptance, of body image, and of the struggle to become popular. Sometimes, I was one of those people, and it never allowed me to live a fulfilling life.

I remember when I was eleven years old, one of the girls in my class stood up in the cafeteria and started

reading the calorie information on all of the food in my lunchbox. She then told me that if I wanted to eat that, I needed to make myself sick after, or else I would get fat. Being exposed to those ideals at such a young age made me realize how scary it is growing up, and how incredibly false they really are. I never really was confident in myself because of the way my friends talked about beauty, and by the way the media perceived what was really "beautiful." I was surrounded by scary and unsettling images that would make me feel as if I needed to starve myself instead of actually exercising and being happy. I had to realize that I was just a kid, and I needed to focus on my health and not these ideas of "beauty."

My experience at an all-girls school gave me an interesting perspective into the world of unrealistic expectations. I constantly saw girls walk by me in the cafeteria with clean, white styrofoam trays with nothing but a cheese stick on them, and girls waiting in line for the bathroom, five minutes after eating barely anything.

I remember countless times being in the bathroom, hearing girls making themselves sick because they thought they ate too much. Watching them, I thought this was completely normal. I thought that the idea of wanting so desperately to be a size zero was a common goal of all girls, and it wasn't unhealthy to think that way.

I grew up thinking that you have to have a boyfriend when you are in middle school or else you are weird, and if you are not asked to homecoming Freshman year you are a loser. I grew up watching movies that showed prom queens being the hottest girls in school, and dating the hottest boys in school. I grew up thinking that sorority girls were perfect, and that you couldn't be one unless you looked like you belonged on the cover of a magazine. I also grew up thinking that if I wasn't drop dead gorgeous, that I wouldn't have many friends at all. I constantly was petrified of growing older, because I knew that I couldn't get the career I wanted because of the way I looked.

Soon, I grew up, facing the same conflicting ideals about beauty. However, I did everything I could do to remain a good person with good values and morals. Although I make mistakes like everyone else, I knew that I could control my choices, but I couldn't control the way God made me. I became queen of my high school and president of my sorority, and I realized that my looks, my body, and my appearance does not matter. Although I am 21 years old and never had my first kiss, I haven't been a size zero since fourth grade, and never had a boyfriend, this does not astray from any of my accomplishments. This doesn't make me any less of a person.

In the end, a significant other won't be the reason you are happy and successful. Although it is important and amazing to have these relationships, you still need to be able to love yourself, and achieve things on your own sometimes. If you were made and built as a size two, that is a beautiful thing. If you are made and built as a something greater or less than that, it is just as beautiful, because you are not your jean size. You are not your body, and you are not your face. Those things make up a wonderful human being, but you do not equal those things.

Surrounded by false expectations and unrealistic goals for beauty, we all struggle to find ourselves in this world. It is necessary to realize that the most important thing in life is to be healthy and happy. You are just as important to anyone else, no matter what you look like. Instead of focusing on what you see on the outside, focus on everything you want to accomplish in your life. Do not set limits for your goals, and achieve everything you can.

I always thought I would go unnoticed in my life because I thought I wasn't as pretty as the other girls in my class, and I couldn't fit in my dream dress for prom. I now know that I can achieve anything that I set my mind to because it is the heart that really counts in the end.