The other day in first hour Composition I, we played a game where everyone had a piece of paper and wrote a starting sentence and then passed the paper on to the next person who would add to the “story.” This cycle would repeat itself and a different “story” would emerge from each paper. At the end, we all read the paper that had ended up with us. It was all fun for me until there was a sentence in one that read “Girls who don’t shave their armpits are gross.”

Unnecessary, right? And the worst part? Half of the class laughed when the reader got to that part.

That got me thinking.

We live in a society where everyone judges everyone else for the littlest things. It’s so bad that a girl who leaves her naturally growing body hair to it’s own devices is shamed.

Why do we do this? Why do we see people doing something outside of the accepted norm and immediately draw attention to it? Why do people even feel the need to make a judgement on people based on physical appearance? And worst of all, why do we feel the need to make the negative judgements known? Why do we feel the need to possibly hurt people’s feelings?

This is something that I don’t have an answer to. But what I do know is that everyone is different. Everyone has different experiences and quirks. What may be weird to you could someone else’s normal, everyday life and vice versa. So, don’t judge someone based on superficial things like, say, whether or not they shave their armpits. It’s their life, and they can live it however they feel fit. Instead, judge them on whether or not they are a fundamentally a good person with good intentions. After all, as cheesy as it may sound, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.