We call them beautiful; their wide, haunting eyes, silky, long hair, and long, lean bodies. They don't walk; they float, like angels living amongst us. We want to be them; we want their perfection.

But underneath the makeup, and the designer clothing, they're less than beautiful. Their stares change from haunting to haunted. Haunted by the pressure to skinnier and more beautiful than girl standing next to them. They trade their lives and souls, just to be called beautiful.

People don't understand the pain and suffering, the horrors, they endure to be considered beautiful. The bathroom floor become their sanctuary, their safe haven, as their spill out into the toilet. They can not enjoy a simple thing like a unwrapping a Dove chocolate, because that would be too many calories. Their family is a distant memory, traveling to distant countries. Finding love is a joke; nobody looks beyond their beautiful, outer shells to see what might lie beneath.

So why do we strive so much to be like people that are not even truly living?

Think about this; a girl, only fourteen, flips through a magazine. She sees a picture of a model, and thinks "I want to be this way." But her hair isn't straight, and her body isn't fake; and she's always felt a little overweight. These thoughts blind her from the truth, the truth that people already love her.

So what if her hair is a little frizzy, and she doesn't wear a size zero? Twenty years into the future, it isn't going to matter what size she was, what color she dyed her hair, who she hung out with. What is going matter is how she lived, how she acted, and the way she treated other people.

No one should have to starve themselves to be accepted. We are all different, and we all serve a different purpose. Our world would be quite the boring place if we were all the same. The size of a girl's jeans should be overlooked, and instead see the size of her heart.

We shouldn't be pressuring girls to be "beautiful", whatever "beautiful" actually is. The definition of beautiful in the dictionary is this; "having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc." True, beauty on the outside is temporarily nice to think about, but it doesn't satisfy any senses. Someone who shines from the inside, they have a lasting effect on us. The way a person treats is always going to trump the way they look.

Beauty on the outside doesn't count. It's the beauty that people hold on the inside that does.