During a recent photo shoot the girls of Fifth Harmony got honest about staying confident in the spotlight, the women they consider beautiful and the overall meaning of beauty.

Fifth Harmony are on a mission to inspire their fans to be confident by revealing how they stay confident and who they look up to.

"We are in the spotlight and there are people constantly commenting on how we look or on our personalities and that can be really difficult, especially [because] we're all young," Ally Brooke Hernandez told Teen Vogue about staying positive. "It's so tough when you see one of your girls sad, or someone said something that bothers them. It just feels so bad. It's so important for me to be there for them, because I'm the oldest and I feel [like] it's my responsibility to be an example."

Like most celebrities, the group faces scrutiny on a daily basis from the media and on social media. If it's not their outfits or bodies being criticized, it's their hair or makeup.

"I think the BS [that] media feeds you about beauty is ridiculous and makes us work for a standard of perfection that's unreal and isn't what you should be focusing on at all," said Camila Cabello. "As cliche as it is, what's on the inside is what counts. For the media, beauty is about improving yourself physically, whether it's about plastic surgery or this new line of mascara or changing your face and putting on more bronzer ... but what's important is cultivating your mind and your heart, and that's what makes you beautiful forever."  

So who do the group members consider examples of real beauty? Cabello and Normani Kordei gave superstars Taylor Swift and Beyoncé shout outs. Cabello described Swift, who, according to Billboard, she calls her idol, as someone who "carries herself with such elegance and poise" and Kordei named Beyoncé as her biggest inspiration.

Hernandez and Lauren Juaregui, however, stayed close to home when they named their mothers as women who they consider beautiful because of their strength and the great example they set for them growing up. 

Regardless of how confident the girls may be now, for Dinah Jane Hansen and Kordei that hasn't always been the case.

"It took me a long time to realize the meaning of beauty," Hansen. "Growing up, I used to want to be the girl in the magazine, with a perfect face or body, and I've come to realize true beauty is what's within. It's the girl that's happy with her own reflection."

For Kordei, the struggle was tied to looking physically different from her group mates.

"[Something] that's been a big obstacle [for me] is that I'm African-American, and in the group, I'm the one [who] stands out because I'm darker complected," said Kordei. "I find it to be beautiful now and I have security with myself, and I'm in this position to inspire young black girls and boys to do whatever they want despite their skin color. I know you can do anything you put your mind to and the exterior doesn't matter. You are beautiful."