I grew up in a generation where if you didn’t have the perfect clothes or the right amount of eyeliner, you weren’t considered a textbook “pretty girl.” I grew up thinking I was less because I couldn’t afford the brand new UGG boots every year, the neon Sugarlip tank tops or whatever else was circulating like wildfire through middle schools back in 2007.

At the age of 12, I had resigned myself to thinking that because my jeans were from Wal-Mart, and my mom wouldn’t let me wear make up to seventh grade, somehow I was less of a person. I wasn’t wanted by anyone. So I cut those emo bangs (that everyone had back then) and hid one eye behind them with angst and prayed that my pimple ridden face would clear up before I graduated high school.

Hell, I barely had friends. I spent a great deal of time invested in young adult novels and writing a terribly articulated blog lacking detail and undeniably embarrassing reviews about those books.

It wasn’t until I got to college that I contemplated the possibility of beauty not being the most valuable possession in life.

Sure, you hear it time and time again from your mother, from your aunts, from your father and even from your friends. But it’s one of those lessons you never really understand unless you come to the spiritual attainment yourself.

Those beautiful girls from middle school didn’t inevitably have their lives figured out. In fact, now as I browse their social media accounts (things they keep up on religiously because they still believe a fraction of the world is overcome with interest in their lives) I understand that having a symmetrical, unblemished face does not signify success.

I know what you’re thinking, “who the hell is this random girl who probably hasn’t accomplished anything in life other than writing as an intern for a Millennial based media source.” And you’re right. But I also know there are many girls in my generation who have felt the same pains, experienced the same shortcomings and have grown up believing they were less than whole because they did not fit society’s cookie cutter image of what they “should” be. I don’t think we should accept that any longer.

I sit here now, after having finished watched (embarrassingly enough) all 5 seasons of the show Girls, and having read an article about Halsey in Rolling Stone magazine and ask this generation if we, as Millennials, can focus on one thing: Being real. I hope when our generation of young adults procreates, that we have constructed a world in which our daughters will not have to wear four layers of make up by the age of 12 in order to feign perfection and feel whole.

I hope they do not want to change themselves, shrink themselves, stretch themselves, and color themselves in. I want only for all women to know their true electric attractiveness and undeniable power simply by being who they are.

I hope to see more of Lena Dunham sitting on her apartment floor, taping away at her laptop in her underwear and stuffing her face full of food when she’s stressed. I wish that young women could be who they wanted, cut their hair off and dye it blue like Halsey without needing an explanation of sanity. Why is it that I hope to see unshaven legs, unexplained tattoos and women with unruly hair on our television screens? Because that, my friend, is what is real.

We do not love the people around us for how they look or how expensive their clothing is. So why is it that we should portray that on our television shows? Why is it that young women grow up believing that unless their eyebrows are freshly waxed and their nails are painted perfectly, they are undesirable?

Our ideas, our emotions and our souls are greater than any single piece of our bodies. Let us offer that to future generations.

Thank you to a less beautiful me, for helping me grow to understand that looks are less than happiness.