Girls are like shoes.

Some of us are like those beautiful, valuable Christian Louboutins (or whatever your favorite brand of designer shoes are), while others decide to be those cheap, easy-to-get and replaceable clearance rack shoes.

Girls that make themselves cheap and replaceable like the clearance rack shoes set themselves up to be treated the way that they treat themselves – replaced, forgotten, damaged, lost and minimally valued. Girls that treat themselves like Christian Louboutins are treated by others like Christian Louboutins.

When you love yourself, love your flaws, love your quirky little habits, you set yourself up to be loved and respected by others. If you don’t begin by first loving yourself, how can you expect yourself to be loved by others?

In the topic of self-love, one thing comes to mind. The idea of calling your best friend degrading names, even if it is in a joking way, is not a way to promote self-love. Sure, you may be kidding around, but how does this come across to others, to your friend? Basically, you are saying that it’s okay to treat you/your friend less than what they deserve. Others see this, and assume that it’s okay to put down, even jokingly, your friend. Build relationships based on love and respect, not sarcastic put-downs.

Everyone has that pair of shoes that they use and abuse. I routinely walk through mud, dust, and truly wear out those pair of shoes. It’s not that I am out to damage my shoes, or that I am a horrible person. Rather, I know that because these shoes were cheap to begin with, because they don’t have any special or unique qualities, and because I can easily replace them, it doesn’t hurt to use and abuse them.

Then, I have my valuable, special occasion shoes. I avoid wearing them for day-to-day occasions because I don’t want to risk having them damaged – they would be hard to replace. I respect my shoes, because in a way, my shoes demand to be respected. They weren’t sitting on the clearance rack along with thirty matching pairs screaming to be my around-town shoes, desperate for someone to purchase them, that would soon face a fate of being worn out beyond any hope of repair.

It doesn’t matter if you are pretty, talented, popular, etc. There are plenty of cute clearance rack shoes, and I will concede that there are some not so cute Louboutins out there. It doesn’t matter how cute the clearance rack shoes are, or how ugly the Louboutins are. I will still treat the Louboutins far and away better than the clearance rack shoes no matter what, simply because of the fact that Louboutins are the sacred red-soled shoes of the gods.

I hear so many girls complain that they keep being treated poorly and disrespected by their friends and significant others. The thing is, though, that if you don’t begin by first loving yourself, you set yourself up to never be truly loved and respected by others. I have never met anyone who would stomp through mud with their two-thousand-dollar pair of Louboutins. If you begin by treating yourself like a pair of Christian Louboutins, you will never attract people that just want to wear you down and trudge you through the mud; you will only attract the people that want to value and respect you.