Confidence is the will to wake up in the morning and want to live the day as no one else but yourself. You value yourself as a person, and you believe your opinion matters and is not something to be taken for granted. You respect yourself enough to not let others disrespect you, and you have the will to walk away when you know something isn't right. This is what we should be instilling in young girls and boys, not pop culture and gender biases. Not a version of something that is photoshopped, and cropped into an alternate image that is not humanly obtainable. We have to start teaching each other the value of confidence and self-respect, because these are dying morals and we as a society are killing them.

Young girls are taught that unless you are a size 0, you don't meet the beauty standards. We now have young girls self inducing eating disorders on themselves because they were never taught that people come in all shapes and sizes, and they're beautiful for their personality - not their body type. We have young girls thinking that men can treat them as if they are sexual objects, because that's the way we let the media portray women in the movie and pornography industry. We have to let go of the sex culture that is corrupting the mind's of these young girls, because when they cannot do what they see that is portrayed through media- they begin to feel as if something is wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with them, there's something wrong with our society.

Young men are taught that their masculinity depends on how "tough" they are. When a young boy chooses not to engage in violence and demeaning acts towards others, he is considered weak in the public's eye. In turn, this creates an adverse affect on these young boy's with them also thinking something is wrong with them. We define men as sexual beings, only caring about one thing. What about the men that care about more, though? Have we as a society thought that there was more to a person than just sexuality? This leaves people feeling as if no one cares to find out what else they have to offer the world, as if their opinion doesn't matter.

We as a culture are creating confidence issues in our growing youth, telling them if they don't look or act a certain way they aren't considered to be average. The media is instilling false advertising and perceptions of what children should look up to, and aspire to be. We're taking away the creativity and aspirations that every young adult needs to grow up loving themselves. If you've been affected by the media's inaccurate portrayals, gender biases, masculinity remarks or feel you're not up to par- you are the only person that you will ever be. Morph yourself into something you choose to be, not what is expected of you. You will kill your happiness and who you are as a person by following the crowd. You're perfect just the way you are.