Lately, particularly on social media, girls tend to hate on each other rather than building each other up. While it is obviously terrible for anyone (not just girls), it hurts me even more to see when girls tear each other down. The reason being is that while it is 2018, there are still some aspects where women are not exactly treated the same as men, and it is extremely important for us to be supporting each other.

For instance, there is the issue of beauty standards. To me, it seems as if imperfections such as acne, scars, extra weight, not enough weight, and more are much more normalized for men. Women are essentially expected to always be beautiful in society’s standards. On the topic of this hate happening on social media, I was recently on Twitter when I saw an encounter that really bothered me.

A girl had posted a photo of herself on the social media platform with the caption of something along the lines of “finally learning to love myself.” The girl was a little overweight and had some acne on her face. Of course, the comments were full of hate. The surprising thing to me, though, was that the majority of the comments came from either a) girls or b) men who pertained some of the same physical “imperfections” as the women in the photo.

This just goes to show that women are more penalized and hated on for not being perfect, which is why girls need to support each other. The importance of spreading love on social media and applying it to the real world is huge. You really have no idea what people are going through and what battles they’re facing, so hating on people and bringing them down shouldn’t be happening anyway. However, I know that problem won’t be fixed so for the time being we need to emphasize the necessity of girls supporting girls so they feel closer to their insecurities being as accepted as men’s are.