You Can Still Find Love, Even If You Hate Yourself

Stop telling girls that they will never be loved if they are not their own biggest fans first. Stop messing with their heads, because they aren’t “there” yet. They will be at some point, but they might get there with someone else’s help.

Stop telling girls that no guy will ever fall in love with them, because they hate themselves, which means it will be impossible for someone else to love them. We’re all different, we all get to different places at different times, different ages, following our own rhythm.

Stop telling girls that they must find things about themselves that they like in order to be happy. Maybe they’ll never end up liking a few things. You can give them compliments that will help them find a bit more confidence, but stop treating “love yourself” like a poem they need to memorize. That’s not how it works.

Stop with lines like, “Your hair is amazing. Why don’t you like it? It’s so pretty and you do everything you can to ruin it.” Maybe changing their hair makes them feel more confident, more powerful, and maybe for a day they manage to escape from their own skin and they feel good about it.

They can’t run away from who they are forever, but sometimes change is good. Feeling like they’re someone else for a few hours won’t cause any damage and it could be fun. It could boost their confidence. Why not let them be happy?

Stop telling girls what they do or what they do not need to change about themselves. Stop telling girls to follow all the rules that society thinks is important. Let them be skinny, tall, short, overweight, curvy, or whatever they want, as long as they aren’t damaging their health. Stop reinforcing rules that are useless and harmful.

Instead, start loving girls who hate themselves even more, because maybe with that extra love they will start to feel better. If they can see how beautiful, smart, and important they are through someone else’s eyes then maybe they will start seeing it with their own eyes as well. They might just need a tiny push in the right direction. That’s why you should love them even more if they don’t love themselves.

Don’t underestimate the power of love, ever. Give as much as you can. This doesn’t mean that you have to “save” them or “fix” them. Just love them with all the love that you can find in yourself, all the love you can give. Sometimes it will be enough, sometimes it won’t be. But you won’t be able to tell if you don’t try first.

So stop telling girls to love themselves, and start loving girls who should love themselves.