Growing up I never felt beautiful. My scraggly dark curls somehow always looked messy and untidy in comparison to the bright blonde locks of stars such as Cameron Diaz or Blake Lively, all of whom the media deemed as the 'most perfect women' in Hollywood. My teeth were so crooked and separated, they may as well have existed in different time zones and my naturally thick, jet black arm hair seemingly grew back quicker than the speed of light. Staring in the mirror only served as a constant reminder of how visually unappealing I was compared to my blue-eyed, straight-toothed and fair-skinned peers.

Now five years later, my mindset has changed completely. After years of endless self-loathing and disgust at my appearance, I now look in the mirror and feel deeply satisfied with the girl looking back at me. 

As a women in this society, I feel as though it has become strangely taboo to openly admit that you are confident in your own appearance, with many women who call themselves beautiful being quickly branded as 'too cocky' and 'full of themselves' by others. Women will get called 'air-heads' or 'self-absorbed' for simply taking a selfie showing a hint of cleavage whilst men can happily gawk at themselves in gym mirrors for hours on end with no remarks from anyone. You have a six-pack. We don't care.

Our society's immense fixation on physical appearance is frightening. When I type in "How to make yourself more" into google, the most commonly searched word after is "attractive". Words like 'intelligent' and 'happy' do not even appear in the top ten. The idea that 'one's self-worth comes exclusively from their attractiveness' has been drilled into us since we were children and it's produced a generation of self-loathing teenagers who have been conditioned into insecurity.

I cringe thinking about how many wasted hours I must have spent scrutinising myself in the mirror, changing clothes multiple times before going out and putting myself through stupid workouts all in a futile attempt to achieve this 'beauty standard' that simply means nothing. My belief that my 'self-worth was wholly determined by my physical attractiveness' was holding me back from happiness and achieving true self-confidence. I needed to fix that. 

I began experimenting with my appearance and instead of trying to appeal to the 'male gaze', I started to wear, look and act how I wanted. I bought a pair of latex 'stripper' heels, half a dozen cowboy hats, floral men's 70s shirts and a 'tastefully trashy' big cheetah coat. I started wearing bold blue eyeshadow, dyed my hair bright orange, drew a fake mole on my upper lip every day and even gave myself a rather regretful eyebrow slit. I finally allowed unattractive pictures of myself to be posted online, I danced freely at parties, went to school with no makeup on and finally started standing up for what I believed in and voicing my opinions.

I now feel empowered by my freedom. It becomes addictive being confident in yourself. If I could speak to my younger self, I would instantly slap her for wasting so much precious time disliking herself and feeling like she wasn't 'beautiful' enough. As cheesy as it sounds, life is too short to spend time hating yourself. A world in which people stop hating themselves and holding themselves to unachievable standards, is a world in which people are empowered.