Do our experiences overshadow our attempts at improvement?

I'm enjoying my project. And missing Scrubs. But mostly enjoying my project. But it wasn't until tonight I figured out a hitch. I am cleansing myself of all the negative images that the media feeds me about what women are supposed to look and act like. But at the same time, I'm stuck with all the things I've experienced during my nearly twenty years of life. And it's not just a moment of quarter-life crisis, which I've been suffering through and will suffer through until I realize twenty years is not very old. But how am I supposed to cleanse myself of negative influences when I have the influences from my childhood still repeating at the back of my head?

I wasn't a skinny child in elementary school. I was chubby. I even have pictures. It's pretty awful. But the thing about it is that elementary kids are mean, and even though I still have yet to figure out why little girls and boys would feel like they needed to be better than anyone else, I can't shake the things they said to me. Fifth grade was probably the big low point of all of it, when I'd spend recesses inside rather than outside, and the girls would come into the room, make fun of me and spit on me. When their mothers were in the room sometimes. And their mothers would never make them apologize. And then I moved, and again, I got picked on for being fat. And then somehow I put that all away somewhere deep into my mind, lost some weight through the magic of hormones, and then in junior high it basically all comes back to haunt me when my friend's cousin, whom I had been in fifth grade with, told her about how they used to pick on me because of my weight.

Then I date a guy who not only took every single frustration he ever had out on me, but also made me feel fat by telling me how attractive skinny girls are. If it wasn't already programmed into my mind enough, a guy I date manipulates me into thinking I'm not good enough.

So now even though I'm trying to get rid of all of these ideals that have been pushed onto me by other people, I'm still stuck dealing with the issues that my peers, rather than the media, have put on me. Not only am I convinced that I'm chubby, I'm also convinced that people will never be genuinely attracted to me unless I'm skinny.

My logical side tells me that weight does not determine the quality of a person. I know I'm a good, compassionate person with my priorities in the right places. I care about people and I worry about what I say and I try hard to do well in school and at work. These are the things that matter to people, not your weight. But I feel like the media is sending a different message, and just because I'm trying to shed that view of the world, what happens when I deal with the people who haven't been freed from it? How do I find happiness even with my experiences, and how do I maintain that happiness even though other people may not feel the same?