High school piles enough stress on its students, and simply being a girl can toss added worries on top of all that. Thoughts like “Am I pretty enough, skinny enough, or will boys like me?” work their way through every girl’s head at one point or another, and I have witnessed and experienced it first hand.

As a photographer, I witness girls criticizing the way they look in pictures that I take. I hear things like “My face is such an odd shape,” “I look fat in this photo,” and “I am not photogenic.”  They nitpick every imperfection.  Meanwhile, I look at the photo and I see a model of beauty.

However, I can relate to my photography subjects, as I react the same way to photos of myself. It stresses me out to see myself in pictures or in a mirror. I hate shopping purely because I have a fear of certain sizes of clothing not fitting me, and changing in front of other girls who have seemingly “perfect bodies” (whatever that means) causes me to feel self-conscious.

As girls, we all compare ourselves to each other, to the photoshopped models on the front covers of magazines, or to extremely fit athletes. Heck, I have even caught myself comparing my body shape to mannequins in the mall. It may seem unreasonable, but this is many girls’ reality or at least the reality of my sister and myself.

Comparison, body image, and a desire for control drove my sister, Kortney, to an eating disorder that nearly killed her. I never understood her mindset or her fear of weight gain until I entered high school and my body and my beauty suddenly mattered to me.

The lies that told me I was not pretty enough or skinny enough took root in my mind and drove me to extreme diet and exercise. I dropped nearly 15 pounds, sinking below the healthy weight limit before anyone caught on, and I continued to drop weight after.

But you wouldn’t have known that I had an eating disorder unless I told you, and yet that disorder took over every aspect of my life. The same goes for most girls. Their cases might not be as extreme as my own, but this mindset is not something you tell everyone about. Consequently, it is easy to miss even with a close friend, but it is important to pay attention. 

All girls deserve to feel beautiful because they are. Each and every one of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:14). Nobody needs to look like a supermodel to be beautiful.

Therefore, my advice to all girls is to embrace what is beautiful about you and to cherish the gifts you were given. Embrace your curves or lack of them. Embrace your skills and your intelligence. Embrace your beauty, and don’t forget to remind other girls about their own beauty, too.