Sophia Bush Empowers Young Women, Talks Body Image And Not Being Perfect

Sophia Bush is encouraging women to love themselves, regardless of what size they may be.

During an appearance on the Today Show, the former One Tree Hill star spoke of her favorite charity, I Am That Girl, which encourages women everywhere to feel strong, secure and beautiful.

"I've spent so much time talking to women about, ‘Hey, I may be on TV and I may be photographed for magazines, but I don't think I'm perfect. I don't wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and go, ‘Hey, I'm amazing!' That's not how it is," Bush admitted during the new interview, according to an April 30 report by E! News. "I'm a women and it's a struggle for all of us."

In Feb. 2014, Bush teamed up with fellow activist Alexis Jones on her book, I Am That Girl, which donated 10 percent of the proceeds to the I Am That Girl charity. In the book, Bush urged readers to be their "best self" and look at themselves as a whole in her personally written forward to the novel.

The I Am That Girl charity, which was started in 2012, aims at transforming the lives of women everywhere, teaching them to build up confidence in themselves and help to boost confidence in others. Currently, I Am That Girl is building an empire which empowers, supports and educates over 100,000 women around the globe, encouraging them to love and express themselves through online and offline programs and initiatives.

Through her work with the charity, Bush has grown as a woman and learned to do all the things that I Am That Girl urges women everywhere to.

"It took me until this point in my life at 31 to say, ‘Hey, yeah I'm going to embrace my body and own it for me, not anyone else. And I'm curvy. I'm not some rail-thin, 6-foot-tall runway model who was just born that way. I was born like this. And that's A-OK,'" Bush explained. "And the conversations that have sort of come out of that, the conversations about feeling empowered in our skin rather than comparing ourselves to other women have been a really great byproduct."

In addition to her work with I Am That Girl, Bush also supports several other charities and organizations, including Pencils of Promise, Do Something, F Cancer, Live Below The Line and Global Green Gulf Relief.