About Self-Love

Let me begin with a quote by Diana Vreeland. I found this on Cosmopolitan's Snapchat several years ago.

"You do not have to be pretty. You do not owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female'. "

To me, those words feel super empowering. I don't know why, but each time I read it, I feel liberated, as if I have the power to do anything, to be anything and to look like anything I wanted to. I feel like I can say "screw you all" aloud to the whole world. And I think, self-love, should actually be like that. Liberating, because we accept what we are.

I know because it took 19 years of my life to discover what self-love is (and I'm still learning). You should love yourself because you like who you are and you should love yourself because you know your own worth, regardless of what this world has to say. During my school years, I never really liked how I look in the mirror, pictures or in real life. I remembered staring at my friends, thinking if only I could be as pretty as them. If only I had a hair like that. If only I didn't have bunny teeth. If only I were not this ugly, and so on. Those thoughts made me a particularly ungrateful being for disliking me.

I'm not saying that wanting to be pretty is a sin, no it is not. It's just that for a very long time, the society formed the mindset that it is obligatory for girls to be pretty, by all means. Which sometimes in the process, we harm ourselves. Then goes the phrase, "Beauty is pain".

People used to say that if you look good, you will also feel good. Well, for me it's true. But first, you need to love yourself. After that, looking good will be something that comes effortlessly without any pressure, because you're doing it for yourself.