Reading Time: 5 minutes “She’s just soooooo pretty.” I heard my friend’s confidence crippling, threatened by a new girl hanging out with a guy she was seeing. It broke my heart. I cringed as I tried to come up with the right words to text. For starters, there are so many brilliant and beautiful people in the world, it’s not just looks that set a guy or gal in stone with a romantic interest. But that’s not what matters. It wasn’t really about the guy. Self-esteem comes from within. So I answered wholeheartedly and honestly: “So are you.” A babe gorgeous inside and out, all I could say was that who cares if the other girl is really pretty. She is a beautiful woman, and so is my friend. We’re all beautiful. Somewhere along the lines of being polite, Photoshop, and our natural need to categorize the world to better understand ourselves, women [and men] stopped taking compliments and created odd beauty standards instead. We’ve all been there. We’ve compared ourselves to our...