This story was originally published on July 8, 2015.Let me just start out with this whammy of a statement:(which is super important and reason enough)It sounds farfetched, I know, but I'm sayin' this with a straight face. I believe this with every fiber of my being. Here's why:I spend the year lecturing at universities, and in one presentation called "Change the world, Love Your Body: The Social Impact of Body Love," I always ask how many people in the room would feel comfortable calling themselves beautiful (or handsome/attractive, whatever their word choice). Consistently, a small percentage shyly raises their hands. I'm always thrilled to see those hands, but never surprised by those who don't feel confident enough to join in. This group is most certainly not alone in their insecurities. According to one international study , only 4% of women aged 18-29 would call themselves beautiful.Holy shit, y'all."Beautiful" can mean different things to different people, but the purpose behind this question is to ask who feels physically valid. With that in mind, 4% makes me incredibly sad. Especially as I've found this statistic is true across the board, not just for those who identify as women.Want more distressing statistics? Here's the state of our world's body image:There are many ten-year-olds who are afraid of being fat, in fact, 81% feel this way. These ten-year-olds are more frightened of becoming fat than they are of cancer, war, or losing both their parents. For women, 91% are unhappy with their bodies and resort to dieting. And nearly 90% of men are uncomfortable with their bodies, some wishing they were bigger, and others smaller. Some studies show that transgender individuals feel even more "body dissatisfaction" and "weight and shape concerns."Now if that paragraph isn't fucked up, I don't know what is. While this isn't an all-inclusive list of body image statistics, where there is smoke, there's almost always fire. And holy shit, there is a huge fucking fire consuming our world right now.Now, how does this translate into daily life? Here are some distressing ways that body image can impact us on in the big picture:People have really terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days just because of their perception of their bodies. Have you ever looked in the mirror and felt your heart sink because of your reflection? Yep, me too. And it's completely unnecessary. We've been trained to compare ourselves to an absurd ideal, so we never feel good enough — and we take that feeling with us wherever we go.Those who have low self-esteem make considerably less money than their confident counterparts. They also take fewer risks, and with that magnitude of insecurity, they are far less successful in reaching their goals.How many of us have waited to do something until we've lost weight? I'll buy jeans AFTER I lose ten pounds. I'll start dating AFTER. Sound familiar? Whenever I ask a room full of people if they've done this in their lives, almost all hands immediately fly into the air. We painfully stunt our lives because we have decided that our bodies are simply not good enough to work with now. Consider the progress we're not making because of this. Tragic.When we dislike our bodies, we tend to feel unlovable and undeserving. Feeling this way can affect our relationships in a lot of ways: from not approaching those we're interested in, to staying in abusive relationships much longer than we should.Extremely low self-esteem and self-hatred is clearly significant enough to smother happiness and growth. And, evidence suggests that severe body image obsession puts us at higher risk of suicide . Sadly, we see case after case of this: people ( adults and teens alike) who would rather die than live in the body the world has told them is inferior.