Many a time, I have caught myself looking at another young woman my age, and thinking to myself, "wow, I wish I could be pretty like her," or, "I'll never be that beautiful. She is stunning, and I am just so ugly compared to her." For a long time - longer than I'd care to admit - I put myself down because all I did was compare myself to everyone else, and believed I was hideous because of that. That was until I saw a screenshot of a tumblr post from sscreamss saying: "just because you don't look like somebody who you think is attractive, doesn't mean you aren't attractive. Flowers are pretty, but so are Christmas lights, and they look nothing alike." From then on, when I catch myself thinking those thoughts, I think to myself: "She is beautiful, but so am I, in my own way."

Thinking of myself as something different, yet still beautiful, has really improved my self-esteem and the way I view myself, especially when I'm forced to look in the mirror on days when I really would rather avoid it. It's taking a while, but I'm learning to accept myself as I am, and embrace the beauty I have on the outside, and, more importantly, the beauty I have on the inside.

Slowly but surely, I'm retraining my brain to say, "wow, she's beautiful, but I can't compare myself to her. I'm different, and beautiful in a different way." I've learned that I can't hold myself to the beauty standards of today's society because they're just too unrealistic.

And I've been telling that to my friends, as well. I told one of my very best friends that she was beautiful to me, and when she didn't believe me, I told her that, even though she didn't look like what society says she should look like. I told her that she's the sunrise, the bright hope of a new day, and that she didn't need to be "classically beautiful" because that kind of beauty doesn't exist.

Physical beauty is completely subjective, and all of us are beautiful in our own ways. Next time you catch yourself wishing you could look more like her, remind yourself that you're both beautiful, and that the world is big enough for the two of you to shine brightly, in your own different ways.