Everyone seems to have an opinion on how you should look.

Case in point: seventh-grade math class.

I sat next to two girls in Middle School, both of which I had huge crushes on. One day they decided to point out a prominent feature on my growing, puberty-ridden body–my hairy legs. They did so by asking one simple question:

“Why do you have grandpa legs?”

As a seventh grade boy, I could not control the rate at which hair was growing on my legs. Yet these girls were apt to point out that the hair on my legs was comparable to that of a grandpa–a grandpa! Embarrassment struck my core.

Hair was something I inherited genetically. From where I don’t know, since most of my family is surprisingly not hairy. From the top of my head down to the tips of my toes (yes, I have hobbit feet), I have hair. As I grew older, I began to accept this reality more and more. I accepted it even to the extent of embracing it and using it to hide many of the challenges I faced with my fluctuating weight.

I entered high school a chubby teenage boy. Mid-way through, I transformed into a tall, 5’11 stallion who has his face every day. Day after day I shaved, though I never put much thought into why. It was just something I did, and I had no reason not to. When my senior year came, new challenges of a wave of weight gain came with it. As I looked at my face in the mirror, I couldn’t avert my gaze from my growing double chin. It was there, day after day, staring straight at me. I hated it, and I needed to do something to cover it up.

Enter the chinstrap phase. Despite being genetically able to produce enough hair for a full beard, I willingly underwent the grueling task of shaping it each day into a thick black strip covering my jaw line. I did so because the chinstrap provided me one, beautiful gift: coverage. Because the space between my jaw and neck was covered in hair, it masked my grotesque double chin. I was thankful and continued sporting the facial hair style well into college.

When I left my home in Colorado for the hillside of Nyack College, I gained more control over what I ate and how much I exercised. I lost weight quickly and my double chin faded more and more each day. Still, years spent looking at my face with disgust took its toll. Instead of just hating my double chin, I began to hate everything. I hated the way my right eyelid drooped lower than my left. I hated how my lips sat at a slant. My butt chin, though not extremely defined, drove me crazy. I hated myself, and college Austin needs a new, increased level of coverage. Begin full beard phase.

As an emerging millennial in New York, my beard was quickly noticed, affirmed, and encouraged. Beards are great, right? Every hipster needs one. All the sexy sports stars have them. And if you didn’t know, beards cover a lot of your face. For me, having a beard meant drawing attention away from all the parts of my face that I hated. Why would someone stare at my crooked teeth when there was a beautiful beard to gawk at? Once in awhile, I would shave, and people would be bewildered. They would say things like, ‘Why did you shave?” or, “You looked so good with a beard!” Little did they know their comments of seeming affirmation were actually contributing to an inner voice that told myself I really was ugly. My millennial beard became a defense against the ugly, grotesque Austin I felt was underneath.

Now college has come and gone and I stand a graduate. I’ve gone most of my college career with a beard, but deep down inside I hated it. Did you know beards are itchy? Did you know under those trimmed hairs all sorts of things happen you don’t know about. Like zits? Zits happen. And you can’t see them because there’s hair, but they’re there, and they’re scary. I’ve grown tired of the beard. But more than that, I’ve grown tired of hating myself. A few weeks ago I gave myself a challenge: go beardless until you like yourself. That’s right! I decided to shave away the coverage for my ugliness and brave the beast underneath. And do you know what happened? I actually began to like myself. Crazy, right?

I started noticing things I never realized about myself. For instance, I’ve always said my eyes change colors based on what I wear. But I never knew why. When I shaved my beard, I realized why that was. I literally have three colors in my eyes. I have an outer band of blue, an inner band of green, and brown dots scattered throughout. It’s pretty gnarly! I also noticed I like my nose a lot. I also like my jawline, for one. And as the days go by, I find myself liking more and more things I once hated.

It took about three weeks of being beardless before I tried growing my facial hair back out. I started feeling ugly and I wanted to cover it up. But something crazy happened. After a week of beard-dom, I started missing my clean-shaven self. I missed the details I saw in my face when I’d wash it in the morning. For the first time in years, I actually liked myself. It was a process and it took the risk of letting go of my safety in order to get there. But now that I’m here, I never want to go back.

In life, the world and the people in it will always have an opinion of what looks best on you. Whether it’s the color of our skin, the style of our clothes, or the hair on our faces, the world will tell you who you should be or what you should look like. When we yield to their opinions, we will find ourselves covering every part of ourselves we perceive as ugly–be that our physical bodies or our emotional hearts. Starving for acceptance, we run after world affirmation like animals on a hamster wheel. We go and go to no avail. The choice to let go of hiding ourselves is scary and tough. Every time I saw clean shaven Austin in my front facing camera (damn Snapchat!) I wanted to scream. But after a while, I started to love myself again. Letting go of my beard meant embracing vulnerability and potential rejection, but it also meant giving myself the opportunity to accept myself for who I am, butt chin and all. Slowly the voice of self-hatred turned into one of self-acceptance, affirmation and love.

The greatest gift we can give ourselves in this life is self-acceptance. If we don’t we'll find ourselves clamoring for the acceptance of the world, our friends, or even our family. We will shave our legs when cute girls make fun of us. We’ll cry for braces to avoid being called “crooked teeth.” Yet changing ourselves for the world gets us nowhere. In the end, self-acceptance is the only thing that gives us the inner equilibrium we need to be content in this life. Getting there mean taking the journey of letting go of what we use to protect and cover us. It means facing potential rejection and vulnerability. But the hamster wheel stops, the hunger for worldly affirmation ceases, and contentment with who we are finally settling in.

The risk is worth it, but no one can take it for us

I’ve decided to take the challenging road to self-acceptance. Will you?