America is full of horrible trends that infiltrate everyone’s lives. We all said “YOLO” because one person started it; I still say “hella” all the time, because I used to make fun of it. These phrases are annoying, but they truly show how easily something can catch on and how influential people are. This is terrifying to me because it creates an avenue for other trends to catch on. I’m sure you’ve heard about some damaging trends, but one of the most frightening trends that has globally surfaced is the “skinny trend.”

One of the worst ones that I have seen recently is the #A4SkinnyChallenge. It’s basically girls holding up a piece of paper to their waist and if they completely disappear behind it, it means they’re skinny. Even one of the smallest girls I know wouldn’t be skinny enough to fit behind it because that’s eight inches long.

That is an insane standard to tell girls to strive for. Even when I was looking this up, Cosmopolitan had an article talking about how harmful this is, yet I experienced a pop up on their website telling me to sign up for diet tips to look like a Victoria’s Secret model. When I wanted to exit this pop up I had to click a button that said: “no thanks, I don’t want to look like a Victoria’s Secret model.” But think about the people who are going to say yes to that pop-up; what is this teaching us about our concept of beauty?

Another challenge is the iPhone 6 challenge: you have to make an iPhone 6 cover your knees to be classified as skinny enough this time.

Or there's the belly button challenge where you wrap your arm around your waist from the back and see if you can touch your belly button. If you can: hooray you’re skinny enough!

Or if you can balance a stack of coins on your collarbone, that is apparently another test you can use.

The only question I have is why? Why do we spend so much time degrading our own bodies and making other people feel absolutely terrible about themselves? Does it make us feel better? Is it really that wonderful to disappear behind a piece of paper? I don’t look at people and think “oh that girl’s waist — TOTALLY 8 inches.” It’s not healthy. None of these trends are.

These trends are making girls who are perfectly healthy feel bad about themselves. I am not ever going to fit behind a piece of paper or an iPhone 6, and I definitely don’t have a thigh gap. And that’s okay. It’s okay to eat food and enjoy your life without worrying about how skinny you are. These trends have had an extreme effect on me: I expect girls to look at me and judge me by the size of my waist or my legs. I can have my boyfriend telling me every day how beautiful I am, and that’s great, but I care about what other girls are thinking and saying when I wear a crop top.

Instead of spending so much time worrying about how skinny we can get, we should spend time reminding ourselves and each other how being perfect is never attainable. And everyone is unique and special and beautiful in their own way — which is not dependent on the skinny factor. Maybe if we did that — we would forget about being skinny and focus on being happy — which is hella cool anyway. What matters at the end of the day is that we are healthy and happy; ask yourself, if you had a daughter, would you want her to grow up in this world? Or would you want her to grow up surrounded by love, health, and positivity? Maybe it is time to stop accepting these fads, and time to get up and promote what is true — that all bodies are different, and uniqueness should be celebrated, not condemned by society.