“Do you think we should be friends with her?” the girl next to me whispered to her friend. The latter glanced at me, sizing me up with a frown on her face. 

“No, she’s fat,” she said matter-of-factly, not bothering to whisper. I looked away, tears pricking my eyes. Red heat crept up my face. 

The other girl also began to stare at me. “She’s not that fat. Okay, I’m going to offer her chips. If she says yes, she’s fat. If not, we can be friends with her.” She rummaged through her bag and pulled out Potato Crisps- my favorite. With the sweetest fake smile plastered on her lips, she asked, “Would you like some chips?”

I half-heartedly returned her smile. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.” Her smile widened as she and her friend exchanged approving nods. 

Later, as they got off at their stop, I let the tears flow freely down my cheeks. I could not bear to see my reflection in the bus window. The realization that I was indeed bigger than most of my classmates punched me in the gut. 

I was seven years old.

Eight years later, my friend and I stood in front of the mirror in the girl’s locker room. She turned around, scrutinizing her side profile. “How do I look?” she asked me. 

“Beautiful,” I said. “You always look amazing.” 

She snorted. “No, I’m so fat. Ugh, I shouldn’t have eaten that much yesterday.” I stared at my friend, who was half my size. She didn’t mean to offend me. But the fact that someone almost every guy found cute did not like the way she appeared was unfathomable to me. So many girls like her sucked in their stomachs to take the perfect selfie for Instagram, raking in the validation of countless strangers. My own culture promoted slender fleshless figures, ignoring the eating disorders and depression behind those bodies. 

You can’t blame those girls from when I was seven; they were children who spoke out of influence. Now a teenager, I struggle as I try to practice kindness to myself. When tradition and stereotypes yell at me because I am not built like a plastic Barbie, I am forced to look within for the acceptance I desperately need. 

Feminist icon Anaïs Nin once said, “She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflection of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself” Is that how I choose to live, always afraid that confidence is not a good ‘look’ for me? Or in a sea of grey, do I choose to be blue? It is little by little, day by day, that I begin to love myself, to show kindness to the parts I wished to cut off before, to disengage from the toxicity of others, to radiate love from within. 

And it worked. Self-acceptance prevailed. After all, a little kindness never hurts, even if it’s to oneself.