Body positivity and beauty

Hey, Hannah here,
I wanted to talk a bit about body positivity. Maybe not all, but lots of girls feel they aren't pretty enough, they ask  themselves,  questions like  "Is my nose too big?" and " What about my eyes?" As a girl I know exactly what it feels like to stand in front of the mirror for hours and hours wondering why I cant be prettier. The truth is it's not only girls that are insecure about their looks, boys can be too.
The word has decided that if you don't look a particular way then you are "ugly". Unfit, not good enough, the media pastes pictures of  "beautiful" models with their tiny stick legs and even tinier waists. Everything about them is just so...  tiny. They make it seem like if you do not look like them, if you don't look like a pin or aren't battling with anorexia, then you aren't beautiful.
To me beauty isn't the way you look, its so much deeper, so much more significant than the way you look.  True beauty is not seen, it's felt. I feel beautiful when I am writing, spending my time creating words that in themselves are truly art, I feel it when I am amongst friends and family, when I am alone, listening to music in the comfort of my own bedroom, I also feel it when I am surrounded by nature but I feel it most when I am confident and comfortable in my skin.
I went through a time when I made some wrong decisions that i have had to pay for. I had always felt insecure about my body. I was too thin so my butt was too "small". Girls would make fun of me "jokingly" and I'd laugh along, pretending I didn't mind but I so did. I began working out on my stomach and managed to get a super toned stomach that I was proud of. It was the one thing I had that the other girls didn't. One day I noticed that my stomach was becoming fatty, it wasn't yet visible but it was no longer hard or as muscular. I increased the exercise time and added harder exercises but it didn't make much difference. I was growing desperate. I wanted to be beautiful, to have that ultra thin, perfect body and I would get it at any price. I just wanted to be pretty.  I remembered reading of a girl who threw up her food after eating so she would not grow fatter. I have always been a foodie and can't survive on any sort of diet so I figured this was my best shot at getting my model thin body. I knew it was dangerous and I'd heard the bulimia stories but I was so blinded by my misconception of beauty that I didn't care anymore. The first time was hard and it hurt my stomach to be pushing up so hard but I didn't care I wanted- needed to be beautiful so I continued to push enough to get a little bit of food out. The second time was easier, then third even more so. I went on till one day I noticed that vomit tasted bitter. Now this is normal and to be expected of vomit but it was different: it was a painful sort of bitter not the normal plain sort (wow, it sounds like I am describing crisps flavours) and with the vomit came a sort of pain in my throat. I grew worried but did not stop, I eventually told one of my closest friends who told me I probably had a wound in my throat caused by the food I was forcing back up,( I later figured that the hydrochloric acid from my stomach was aggravating it), and that I should stop. I eventually gave up and tried to stop but somehow I couldn't. Even when I wasn't forcing it would come up by itself after I ate. I hated and I would have to excuse myself to the bathroom. The gossip didn't help either, rumours were going round that I was faking for attention. Eventually the vomiting stopped and the wound healed.
The thing was that I had actually believed the world's warped ideas of beauty. But now I know:
Beautiful is the plump girl walking the school corridors with her hanging low in shame because she is an extra large,
its the girl in the hospital  who lost her hair in the battle against cancer,
its the girl who is weird, different, crazy,
it is the girl who is flawed and bold,
it is the girl who can create beauty in art,
it is the girl who is herself and proud of it too.

Boys. I am not too familiar with insecurities amongst boys. but I do know that they have feelings. The world has created the idea that any boy who shows emotion, who cries, who doesn't have bulging muscles, who is not arrogant and doesn't treat people horribly is a "wimp". He is not good enough simply because he is showing emotion, proving he is human, because he cares about people other than himself, because he believes in spending time doing something to change the world rather than chasing girls and being a jerk. The world needs to know : boys can cry too.

Thanks for reading this, I hope I help change your view about you. If you are insecure remember those models with the toothpick legs aren't real; they've had multiple surgeries to look like that and majority of their pictures are photo-shopped, too. You don't need to change yourself; just be you -it's the best person you could ever be! Plus, I recommend listening to Alessia Cara's "Scars to your beautiful" its a beautiful song that passes my point across perfectly. Just be you because you are beautiful, you are flawed, you are imperfect, you are you and that's what counts.

I'm Hannah Kay and I'm just a teenager sharing the world the way she views it.