[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou’re not ugly. I don’t know who you are, but you need to hear that. Because the world is telling you otherwise. I know this, because the world’s telling me the same thing.

It’s in every television commercial, Victoria’s Secret ad, music video, and magazine. For Christ’s sake, look at our movie stars, they’re plastic.

Oscars week is here, and if you want to see what’s wrong with society, watch celebrities walk the red carpet. Reporters will nitpick four-thousand-dollar outfits. Entire conversations will circulate around a dress that has its own Facebook page. Meanwhile: somewhere in Africa, a toddler sleeps in a cardboard box, drinking his own toilet water.

Well, I don’t give a Funyun what celebrities wear to their bar mitzvahs. I care even less who has the nicest-looking pair of hindcheeks. The truth is, Hollywood cares more about us than we do about them.

Don’t believe me? You should. Celebrities spend millions advertising themselves. They want you — need you — to love them. If you don’t, they’re unemployed. So, they’ll wear whatever they need to get your attention, or by God, they’ll go buck naked.

In the end, it’s children who suffer. Because girls aren’t supposed to have the cartoonish figure of Kim Kardashian.

A 2015 study discovered that girls below age fourteen are ten times more likely to develop eating disorders than two decades ago. And it’s not just girls. The same study shows a staggering percentage of boys have anorexia and bulimia, too.

What is happening to us?

I remember when we boys would eat ourselves until we passed out behind the shed. When all red-blooded teenagers practically sold themselves into slavery for ice cream.

So, I’ll say it again, in case you didn’t understand me. You’re not fat. You’re not average. You’re not stupid, muffin-topped, dog-faced, pale, boring, nerdy, or anything else.

You’re a magnolia, made to be exactly the way you are. It doesn’t get any more authentic than you. You’re the real thing. Those celebrities you’re watching, with caked on makeup, who’ve insured their hindparts for more than my house is worth; they’re the fakes. I don’t care what anyone tells you.

You are not ugly.

And that means you.