This article was originally published on July 20, 2015.You may recognize Marie Southard Ospina from one of her myriad viral pieces and impassioned stories on body positivity . She's a voice of reason and honesty in a field where people are prone to shouting. Yet hers is one of the most constant and resonant voices out there, and I'm so thrilled to share this deeply personal piece from her on The Anti-Diet Project . — KelseyBetween the ages of 13 and 15, there were two humans I just couldn't get out of my head: Sofia Vergara and Lesley Lawson (a.k.a. Twiggy). And, though these women will never know it, they were responsible for an endless tug-of-war in my brain throughout crucial developmental years.Well, maybe not them, per se. I don't know these women, after all. Their actual personalities are as much a mystery to me as the texture of the moon or the reason why there isn't an endless source of goat cheese in my fridge.But the reality is that both Vergara and Lawson represented something to my adolescent self. The former was everything my Colombian heritage deemed beautiful: the voluptuous but slender woman with perfectly round, cup-able boobs and booty, thick but toned thighs, a tiny waist, and gloriously olive skin. The latter exemplified the beauty standard of my American half (with British and Eastern European ancestry): the waif-like thinness, fair skin, and chic protrusion of bones.I'm a firm believer that constructs of beauty, attraction, sexuality, etc. are all vastly individual — things that vary so greatly from person to person that seeking to define any of these terms would be more futile than planning my personal role in the colonization of Mars. But, I also understand there are mainstream notions of beauty promoted and upheld by cultures as a whole.More often than not, these notions are, well, narrow. They encompass one body type. We use them when discussing health, weight, class, and character — when all they're really about is aesthetic homogenization.Trying to decode why anyone would want the world's seven billion inhabitants to look the same makes every cell in my body want to implode. How boring. How antiquated. How utterly unnecessary. But, everywhere I've ever lived or traveled, there's been a clear and dominant representation of beauty. And, no matter what culture, women have been taught to hate themselves, so they can change themselves — so they can be "beautiful" one day, too.