To girls everywhere,

It’s okay to be a little bit elitist. You can walk into a classroom with your head held high. You can say “no” without hesitation when you feel uncomfortable or unhappy with a situation. You can start demanding that people treat you better. You can accept the fact that you’re better than the people that want to bring you down and the people that will never appreciate all of your beauty and your positive qualities.

This was a lesson that I learned the hard way. I made a promise to myself that I would start looking at who I am in a better light and soon, others followed. When you put yourself on a tiny pedestal, others will begin to see all your positive qualities shining through.

Nobody deserved my time or attention just because I wanted to be polite. We often feel so bad about upsetting others that, too often, we forget to keep ourselves from getting upset. When a friend of mine hurt me pretty badly when she decided she could no longer be there for me when I was emotional during a low point, I was torn and my heart was broken. When she reached out to me trying to make amends, I decided that it was more important to give value to my emotions. When she decided not to be a supportive friend anymore, she didn’t pay much attention to my feelings in a time when I was already down. I knew that it was not right for me to be overly concerned about not upsetting her. This time, I put my emotions first and decided that I was not ready to make amends. In that moment, I valued myself over others. When you put yourself over others who don’t put you first, you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.

I knew I had to surround myself with people who did love and support me unconditionally and forget about upsetting others to just focus on myself. Too often, girls force it onto themselves to be polite. We usually never feel the need to shake up the status quo for fear of meeting anger and hostility as a response. Even when girls write emails, we’re more likely to use tempering words to avoid even the slightest risk of sounding impolite. I’m not sure if I want to be surrounded by people who can’t tolerate me standing up for myself in the first place. How will we ever improve our relationships if we don’t think highly of ourselves first and demand respect? How will we get people to back off when they won’t get the hint with our polite and soft “no”? How will we get treated the right way by others when others mistake our politeness for complaisance?

Elitism isn’t treating others with unkindness or disrespect. It’s when you know to love yourself, too, and only accept the kind of treatment from others you know you deserve and are worthy of.