A lot of times at work, my coworkers and I will listen to music while we are working so that we can try to have a little bit of fun while we work. Depending on the day, who turns the music on, and what mood we are in, we will usually listen to a different playlist every day. One day within the last week or two, the song “Scars To Your Beautiful” By Alessia Cara came on to the station that we were listening to. Anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with music, and songs that I love, I tend to listen to a lot. After I heard “Scars To Your Beautiful”, along with reading through the lyrics when I got off work that day, I have become addicted to listening to it.

Usually with me, when I am obsessed with or addicted to listening to a certain song, it’s typically because the song has some sort of special meaning behind it. The special meaning behind these songs are different for everyone, but for me, it has something to do with what is currently going on in my life at the time, or something that happened in the past. With “Scars To Your Beautiful”, I felt an almost immediate connection to the lyrics. The lyrics to the song spoke to me on such a personal level, that I couldn’t help but want to listen to it over and over.

For those who haven’t heard the song, Alessia Cara is speaking to the girls who have ever been bullied for not being the stereotypical “beautiful”. She’s speaking to the girls who were bullied because they may have been overweight, or because they looked different, or even because they acted different. Alessia is trying to tell these girls that no matter what anybody says, they are beautiful both inside and out. The beauty that a girl has is not based on what society around them says, their beauty is not defined by another person, but by their personality and talents. No matter what a girl goes through in her life, no matter what obstacles she faces, all she should do is step back, take a breath, and keep pushing forward, because she has people rooting for her, even when it doesn’t seem like it.

Growing up being heavier set girl, I was always made fun of for my weight. I always tried so hard to just brush it off and let it slide off my shoulder and ignore what others were saying. It was often too hard to ignore, and I would constantly beat myself up over knowing that my peers were always so cruel to those of us that are overweight. A lot of us that were bullied for our weight, including myself, usually didn’t know how to respond to the person who was bullying us for our weight, so we usually just walked away or just didn’t say anything. I can remember crying on various occasions because someone made fun of the way I looked because I was overweight. It was never fun to go through.

Looking back at what I went through as a child, though it was rough, it was a learning experience. It helped me to learn more about how I should act as a person, helped me with checking to make sure that I was treating those around me the way that I would want to be treated. It helped me to see how cruel the world can be, but to move past all the cruelty and to try to shine hope and love into the world. In a world that has a growing amount of cruelty in it, it’s nice to hear songs like “Scars To Your Beautiful” because it shows that there is still some good in the world. Songs like this help to show that even if a person is surrounded by cruelty, there will always be someone there for them to rely on. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, so we shouldn’t put somebody down just because they look different or act different than us. We should increase the amount of love in the world and decrease the amount of hatred and cruelty in the world.