It’s a Saturday night. I’m at my boyfriend, Levi’s house. We’re watching The Shining on Netflix, and I am lazily sprawled across most of the couch. We’re not really talking and not really cuddling. We are enthralled by this old movie, occasionally laughing when the little boy character says “redrum” with his imaginary friend that’s actually his finger. About an hour into the movie, I start to get bored. I poke Levi’s side with my foot, because I know he is ticklish there. The two things Levi hates most in the world are feet and getting tickled. It’s a double whammy, and I love it. He jumps up and scowls at me, and I laugh so hard I almost start crying. When my laughing fit has almost ended, I realize something far more horrifying than The Shining. My shirt came up while I was laughing, exposing my stomach, stretch marks and all. I yank my shirt down as my heart beats out of my chest. This is it, I think to myself. Levi has now seen the part of myself I hate the most.

Every girl has stretch marks. Every guy probably has stretch marks too. Stretch marks are usually just pale, pink lines on skin. Mine are different. My stretch marks are from a whole different world. They are red and angry. They stare at me in the mirror, constant punishments for the times I’ve gone to Burger King, or the times I’ve eaten ice cream. They are on my stomach in plain sight, and they are huge. I notice them so much because my stretch marks are brand new. They appeared a few months into my first year of college, a product of the inevitable freshman 15. For me, it was more of a freshman 20. I went from having a stomach I could hide to a stomach that is visible and real. I have always been the girl who weighed a little more than everyone else, and I was pretty good at hiding it throughout middle school and high school. It has always been a source of insecurity for me, but it was easy to ignore. Now, you can see my stomach through my clothes. You can see it when I wear jeans. You can see it through some of my shirts. It has rolls when I sit down. It protrudes from my body when I stand up. It is a fact of my life now, and I can’t hide it like I used to.

My stomach is my worst enemy. I am at constant war with it. I try to flatten it under the waist band of my pants. I often wear loose-fitting shirts and pretend it’s not there. I forget about it throughout the day, but, when I look in the mirror, it taunts me. I hate it because it is tangible. I can touch it. I can hold it in my hands. It is real and I can’t ignore it anymore.

Some girls don’t have a stomach. They have a flat surface that they call a stomach. That’s what we all aspire to have, but I have never had that. My stomach has always been something. It has always been there. It has always been more than what my peers had, and it has always made me feel like my whole body is too big, like I take up too much space. And now that I’ve gained my freshman weight, it has gotten even worse. I find myself wearing smaller shoes, instead of clunky boots, to compensate for my size. I wear darker colors so I don’t stand out. I do my hair the same way every day so no one notices me. I think that maybe if a few parts of me are dainty and unassuming, I can pass as being attractive.

I think this is a fact of life for many women. Some people don’t realize just how much our weight impacts us every day. As women, we are expected to be dainty and petite, small and beautiful. I may be 5 feet tall, but I have never felt small. I have always felt like I was too much, as if the amount of flesh and fat tissue I have on my body directly impacts my femininity and level of attractiveness. It sounds ridiculous when you put it like that, but it’s true.

When I started college and gained weight, I realized I couldn’t label myself as “curvy” anymore. I was fat. Realistically, I know that no one would look at me and immediately think, “Wow, she’s fat.” If I asked any of my friends or my boyfriend if I was fat, they would give me a long explanation of how I’m not skinny, but I’m not fat either. But if you compared me to the only type of women portrayed in the media and on magazine covers, I am fat. If you compared me to someone exactly my height and age who happens to be a size 0, I am fat. If you consider my stomach with its long red stretch marks, I am fat. Conventionally, I am labeled as a fat girl.

What’s surprising about all of this is that, when Levi and I watched The Shining and he saw my stretch marks, literally nothing happened. When I asked him if he cared that I have stretch marks and a tangible, protruding stomach, he said no, without hesitation. He said I was beautiful. He said he loves me, and my body is perfect the way it is. I was shocked. I still am. I am fat and somebody loves me. I am fat and somebody thinks my body is beautiful. This is when I began to realize, after almost a decade of hating my body and desperately trying to hide it, that it is okay to be fat.

Yes, I said it. It is okay to be fat. I know this is a controversial statement, but it is time someone said it. It is time to have an honest conversation about the way society perceives overweight people. All my life, I’ve been told that I shouldn’t eat so much. We’ve all been taught that it’s fashionable to skip meals. It’s trendy to drink smoothies made of green gunk. It’s beautiful to be small. It’s beautiful to be thin. Women are considered beautiful when our stomachs are flat and there is a gap between our thighs. Yes, that is beautiful. It is beautiful to be thin, but it is also beautiful to be fat. My stomach and stretch marks are beautiful. Just because I fit society’s definition of fat doesn’t mean I’m not healthy or beautiful. Even if being fat meant I was unhealthy or ugly, it wouldn’t matter. It is no one’s business but my own. It is no one’s responsibility or right to look at another person and give them a label and a snap judgment. You may watch shows like The Biggest Loser and think to yourself, “How could someone ever get to that point?” The thing is… You’ll never know how. The people on those shows and people like me may not be your idea of beautiful, but that doesn’t really matter. The purpose of a person’s life is not to be beautiful for the benefit of other people. The purpose of my life is not to be thin just because I am expected to be.

So, I will not apologize for my stomach and my stretch marks. I will not hate them just because they are not conventionally beautiful. I will not waste my life hating my body and killing my self-esteem while trying to change it. I will stop looking in the mirror and grimacing at my own body. Yes, I could lose weight by exercising (my least favorite thing in the world). I could starve myself to be thin. Or, I could just accept myself for who I am and who I have always been: a “fat” girl. It is time to take a step back and realize that all bodies are just that: bodies. They are not people. They are the containers of people who have real feelings, thoughts and emotions. We cannot gauge the worth of people based on their bodies. We must look deeper and decide what really matters.

Here’s the kicker: in many countries and throughout history, being fat is/was considered attractive and desirable. In those places, being thin is undesirable. I am certainly not arguing for being thin to be considered unattractive. I am, however, arguing that we stop labeling certain body types as attractive and unattractive. Certain types of people are only attractive because we say they are. Beauty is constructed. It is not an inherent quality that some lucky people are born with. It is a made up thing that differs throughout the world. Why do we put so much emphasis on something that we made up? Why does a person’s level of fatness mean so much to strangers who do not know them? It is silly to think that we write wonderful people off as ugly just because of this perceived notion of what is good and what is bad. And, to be honest, I’m kind of over it.

Though being “fat” may have cost me a lot of happiness and comfort over the years, it was never because I was fat. It was because of society’s collective tendency to make girls above a size 6 feel like they are not good enough. People, especially women, are so often considered beautiful only when they look a certain way. This is wrong, and we should not be made to apologize for the size of our bodies. We should not be made to feel ugly, and we shouldn’t be pressured to change our size. Our beauty comes from our strength, courage, kindness, intelligence, sense of humor, generosity and humanity. It does not come from our flesh and body. Our bodies are not who we are. They are vessels through which we experience the world. They are nothing unless we make them something. They are beautiful unless we say they are not. They are not fat unless we call them that.

So, to society, I am a fat girl, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing to be. "Fat” is not all that I am. It is not my identity. I don't fit into that petty label. I am Courtney. I am fun, exciting, adventurous, hard-working, dedicated, smart, informed, driven, kind, generous, loving and human. I am all of these things and more. I am a person with dreams, goals, thoughts, and feelings. All of these things are far more important than any stretch marks I may have, or the size of my stomach. There are so many ways to describe me without using the word “fat.” I am not fat. I am so much more.