Alessia Cara is a 20-year-old singer/songwriter making her way through today’s mainstream music and has a message for young won everywhere with her inspiring new hit “Scars to Your Beautiful”. In a world today where social media, and the expectations that come with it, are seeping into the minds of young women everywhere, “Scars to Your Beautiful” comes as a breath of fresh air for women. This song has begun to break stereotypes for women across the world in the hope to end biased opinions of how women should look, act, and think, which can have major, negative life altering impacts on those who have experienced so. Now, let’s listen to some lyrics:

She just wants to be beautiful

She craves attention, she praises an image,

She prays to be sculpted by the sculptor

The first several lines start right off with how many women feel the need to be beautiful in the eyes of society and how she seems to need it and nothing else. To have the want to be confident and have the “perfect” body to please everyone around her.

Oh she don't see the light that's shining
Deeper than the eyes can find it

I cannot stress this line enough. When anyone doesn’t feel confident about their figure, clothes, or personality, they often fail to see how the ones who love them see them as: Beautiful. Confident. Perfect.

So she tries to cover up her pain, and cut her woes away
'Cause Covergirl's don't cry after their face is made

This line. This line hits deep. The need to be perfect, even if it means self-harm or endangerment, just to please those around her and to be noticed because she doesn’t feel worthy enough or “perfect” like the girls on runways or magazine covers. She feels the need to cover up what she actually feels and is going through because she is expected to be perfect, with the flawless life, makeup, clothing, even if she doesn’t feel like this in any way.

She has dreams to be an envy, so she's starving
You know, "Covergirls eat nothing."
She says, "Beauty is pain and there's beauty in everything."
"What's a little bit of hunger?"
"I could go a little while longer," she fades away

I get chills every time I hear this line. I replay it over and over because of how relatable and a real-life situation it has been for way too many young people. Weight and body shape is an issue for many people that needs to stop. Personally, I DO NOT care if someone is curvy, skinny, has a little more weight on them, or a little less, all I care about is if you are a decent human being or not, which is what everyone should look at. If you feel that you are eating healthy, working out enough, or have circumstances where you can’t as much as you’d like, then live YOUR life. These few lines are saying how many young people, not just girls, feel the need to become unhealthy in their eating habits, such as anorexia, bulimia, binging, or an unhealthy amount of fasting. Someone’s weight and/or body shape shouldn’t matter and you are to be respectful or kind to them. This is the bottom-line: Don’t read a book by its cover, it really is what's on the inside that counts.

She don't see her perfect, she don't understand she's worth it
Or that beauty goes deeper than the surface

The continuation of the beliefs of many is that you are only beautiful if you are able to see it on the outside. A friend once told me, “I never decide if people are attractive when I first meet them, because when you get to know them, then you really see just how beautiful they are.” Even though this is something that is difficult to achieve and constantly do, I believe that it is vital in being kind to others.

So to all the girls that's hurting
Let me be your mirror, help you see a little bit clearer
The light that shines within
There's a hope that's waiting for you in the dark
You should know you're beautiful just the way you are
And you don't have to change a thing
The world could change its heart
No scars to your beautiful, we're stars and we're beautiful

I love that this song ends with these amazing lines. To everyone who feels like they aren’t worthy, that they aren’t the typical image of beautiful, or to anyone who has lost their confidence lately: Chin up, buttercup. Keep your head held high and walk into a room with the highest amount of confidence that anyone has ever seen. Keep your head up so that you don’t miss all the beautiful things in the world when you keep your head down. Wear that makeup you didn’t have the confidence to wear before or wear no makeup and keep strutting that confidence. Honestly, wear whatever you want, be whoever you want, because in the end, all that matters is your own happiness; unless you take the last cookie in the cookie jar, then I might judge you. Thank you, Alessia Cara, for coming out with this amazing song and inspiring hundreds of thousands of young women everywhere to be themselves, no matter what. So, go out there beautiful people and change the world.