Every single girl has a time in her life where she does not love her body. It’s not an unusual thing to nitpick at yourself and convince yourself that you aren’t beautiful. Most girls encounter this stage in their lives around high school. It doesn’t help when society is constantly telling girls how they’re supposed to look, dress, and act. When girls don’t fit into that little box, they begin to doubt themselves.

From the time they are young, girls are told that if they have stretch marks, cellulite, or any fat, they are not beautiful. However, that concept is absolutely not true. Those are the things that make girls beautiful. It is the body that they were born into, and no one can take that away from them. Girls can spend hours crying about all the things they want to change about their body; looking into the mirror pinching, poking, and prodding at their body, sucking in their tummies, pinching the fat that sticks out on their sides, and poking at the cellulite on their butt cheeks. Once girls realize that they are not stunning despite these imperfections, but they are stunning because of these imperfections, their entire view about themselves will change.

Jes Baker, body positive blogger said “You’re allowed to fall in love with yourself. I promise. This will be the scariest thing you will ever do, and that’s okay. It will also be the most amazing (albeit super gradual) experience you will ever have. It doesn’t make you narcissistic. It doesn’t make you vain. It is liberating in every form of the word.” Loving oneself completely doesn’t happen overnight. People don’t just wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and not find one thing they would change about themselves, it’s a process, but the most valuable process you’ll encounter.

Anytime a girl is upfront about loving themselves, they get called vain, arrogant, and every other insult in the book. News flash, girls allowed to love themselves! They’re allowed to take selfies and feel beautiful without the reassurance from others. They’re allowed to look in the mirror and say “Dang! I am the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!” They don’t have to be modest and pretend that they aren’t the hottest things that has ever walked the planet. What girls think about yourselves is the most important thing in the world, not what other people think about them.

So, let girls love themselves. Let them love their rolls, their stretch marks, everything that makes them unique. Nobody has the right to take that away from them.