You are looking in a mirror. While pinching your stomach, you remark how much weight you have gained. Comparing your old photos with your current ones and noting how much better you looked, even though you thought the same thing while taking them. The truth is, you aren’t ugly.

We all have struggled with body image and self-esteem issues. We see others around us who look different from ourselves and often wonder why we don’t look like them—waiting to love ourselves for when we do. “I’ll be confident when my skin is clear” or “I’ll be happy once I finally lose this extra weight.” Don’t get me wrong, setting goals like these isn’t bad however, it’s about your motivations.

The process of achieving self-love and confidence is complex. As it is, everyone struggles to gain and maintain love and happiness for themselves. It won’t matter what anyone else says until you change your thinking which will prevent you from having insecure thoughts. However, this was not easy for a long time because of social media and the hyper perfect image being shown to us with filters and face app.

Nevertheless, social media is shifting, with creators now on TikTok to encourage body positivity and self-love. There are creators who are dedicated to showing people that no matter how your body looks you can still wear what you want. It is inspiring to see their abundant confidence and encouraging attitude. Despite social media fashion’s growing acceptance of Self-love, there are still toxic ideas about weight on the platform.

One of the biggest examples of this are the ubiquitous Kardashians and their show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, on Hulu. During the scene where they were all getting ready to attend the Met Gala, a stylist shares how skinny one of the Kardashian sisters, Khloe, is, exclaiming how even the models or movie stars aren’t as skinny as her. When she shares that she can’t really breathe, Kim replies, “you don’t need to breathe.” These ideas show us that being skinny and looking flawless trumps all. Not to mention that all of the Kardashians face-tune their features to give a perfect and unblemished look to their photos that can look unsettling and not even like them.

Moreover, Kim Kardashian was even called out once for face-tuning her kids. The entire family wants and is fixated on maintaining a “perfect” and “polished” look on social media. This is incredibly harmful especially when watching their shows and the share their story with plastic surgery and share how hard they work to be skinny, as if that is the only acceptable body type. Even though the Kardashians have tackled issues such as beauty or weight loss in the past, most notably the Kardashian sister Khloe, they still perpetuate harmful ideas.

We are not ugly. We only see ourselves in that way because of what shows we watch, the sites we browse, and what the people around us say. While we can’t control any of that there is one thing we can control:we can control how we feel about ourselves and how we let those outside factors affect us.