Scars To Your Beautiful Song Analysis

The song, Scars to Your Beautiful written by Alessia Caracciolo, speaks to the very challenge every young girl experiences by wanting to be seen as beautiful. What is more, the song contrasts the lengths women will go to in order to make themselves appear more beautiful, but perhaps the line “you should know, you’re beautiful the way you are” is the most profound statement for this generation. According to Peta Stapleton, Gabrielle J. Crighton, Brett Carter, and Aileen Pidgeon
(2017), body dissatisfaction is defined as “dysfunctional, negative thoughts and feelings pertaining to one’s weight and shape.” Specifically, Kathleen Berger (2014) states, “Many adolescents obsess about being too short or too tall, too wide in the hips or too narrow

For example, girls will style their hair to “become more attractive” (Berger 2014), or they will purchase ‘minimizer,’ ‘maximizer,’ ‘training,’ or ‘shaping’ bras, hoping that their breasts will conform to their idealized body image” (Berger 2014). This all appears to be harmless activities, yet when body image is only addressed outwardly and not psychologically, there can be an increase in poor and destructive behaviors. For instance, body image dissatisfaction can lead to poor self-esteem, which can create a cycle of increased body dissatisfaction, followed by decreasing self-esteem (Stapleton et al., 2017). Ultimately, a teenage girl can find herself in a cycle of “depression, eating disorders and obesity” (Stapleton et al., 2017). On study in 2012 revealed, “Two-thirds of U.S. high school girls are trying to lose weight, even though only one-fourth are actually overweight or obese” (Berger 2014). This self-view can lead teenage girls to begin extreme dieting, exorcising or develop a full-blown eating disorder, such as anorexia (Berger 2014). Therefore, it is important for society to encourage young girls to know that they are beautiful just the way they