As a female growing up in millennial culture, I’ve noticed a trend in the way people my age view and treat their bodies. My generation went through high school bombarded with images of the Hollywood body - perfect, flawless, photoshopped, airbrushed, unattainable. Insecurities ran rampant and self-hatred was the new trend. Anyone who actually felt confident in their own body seemed arrogant and out of place. So society fought back, launching a movement that encouraged teenagers and young adults to stop comparing themselves to others and love themselves the way they were created. Society started telling us that there’s no need for us to change because we’re perfect just the way we are.

But have we catapulted ourselves too far in the other direction?

Now before anyone yells at me, I am 100% behind us learning to love our flaws and our imperfections. Each one of us is unique, and it’s important that we learn to embrace our uniqueness instead of constantly wishing we were taller or thinner or more muscular. However, telling people who are thirty, forty, fifty pounds overweight that they’re perfect the way they are isn’t contributing to anyone’s self-confidence. It’s contributing to an epidemic.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and, in many cases, it’s preventable. However, with the obesity epidemic spreading like wildfire and the “fat is beautiful” campaigns pushing propaganda that encourages people who are overweight and obese to stay that way, it’s likely that the number of heart disease-related deaths will continue to grow each year.

Meanwhile, nobody tells cancer patients that their disease doesn’t need treatment because they’re perfect the way they are. Nobody emblazons “love your alcoholism” on posters hung in school hallways. So why is it that we’re so scared to call obesity what it is? Are we so concerned with sparing people’s feelings that we allow them to compromise their health to the point where they’re at risk for a heart attack? Are we so focused on mental health that we neglect physical health?

The issue at hand here isn’t our body types or our metabolisms or our genetic predispositions. It’s our health. Because we are individuals, “healthy” looks different on every single body, and it’s important to know this. However, looking in the mirror at an unhealthy body and calling it perfect is not an act of rebellious self-confidence, nor does it promote self-love.

Society is trying to tell us that loving ourselves means accepting our bodies as they are, when what it really means is accepting our bodies as they were made. None of us came into this world obese; it’s not how we were made and it’s not how our bodies were meant to be. The true definition of self-love is not telling ourselves that obesity is beautiful and that our bodies look perfect with thirty pounds of excess fat. Rather, it’s loving our bodies enough to take care of them. Self-love is loving ourselves enough to change.

Self-love is loving ourselves enough to become better versions of ourselves, and encouraging others to do the same.