Born on July 11, 1996 with an Italian-Canadian descent, Allesia Cara is a Canadian singer who is famous for her 2016 single ‘Scars to Your Beautiful’ that reached the top 10 on US Billboard Hot 100. Years ago, young Cara was just like any other normal girls who play pretend to be a princess and quarrel with her siblings. One thing that makes her special from most other girls her age is that she has a very huge passion on music. She firstly started her career through YouTube, posting her acoustic cover videos. Reaching to where she is right now, of course an effort and a strong intention are needed. Some people even thought that she would never be able to be where she is right now. Cara had been bullied when she was a teen, one reason that led her getting bullied was because she had patches of missing hair when she was in high school. This is actually one of the reasons why she decided to make a campaign about self-acceptance towards her music video, Scars to Your Beautiful. She wanted to share awareness that there is always a beauty regardless who you are and where you are from, because there must be a beauty inside every people. Cara thinks doing campaign towards music video that is being posted on YouTube would make it effectively being watched and known by people because nowadays people tend to be on social media more. (Adzra)
The music video started off with Alessia Cara, the singer herself, dressed in plain long sleeve t-shirt along with black legging. She was standing in the middle of a room singing, but unlike any other music video where there’s a lot of creative property and the singer would dress nicely with makeup on. Instead, she looked fragile and unsure. It was like she was trying to show the audience how real people looked, instead of how the audience expected her to look. And continued with various people from different background—a cancer survivor, transgender, obese, etc. introducing themselves, and then they started to tell their stories. How people would stop and stare, the judgment, the mocking, and how the society set the beauty standards. They also then explained their thoughts on what beauty means to them. What’s most powerful other than the people’s story on how they could emerge out of their ‘dark zone’ and be comfortable in their own body, was the lyrics itself. There are inspirational lyrics like “But there’s a hope that’s waiting for you in the dark” and “You don’t have to change a thing, the world could change its heart”. (Natasya)
In the past, users of social media were identical to young people, but now they no longer have parents, they also use older children and have started using social media. With the development of social media today also increases the development of the internet network. Because without the presence of the internet the public cannot access any social media . With that, more and more problems arise as a result of using social media without less knowledge about how to use social media that is good and right. We as social media users must also be smart in using social media access. Nowadays, lots of cases occur due to misuse of social media. As example, cyberbullying. Cyberbullying involves the use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass, or target another person. Cyberbullying is not just a virus that infects people’s experiences online. In many cases, Cyberbullying leads to real life stalking and harassment. The bully often suffer as much as the victim. The victims are prone to mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. Online bullying can really hurt others, and it can have serious consequences. Being bullied can make you feel alone, scared, and hopeless. The internet is permanent what you post can live forever, even if you delete it. Assume anything you share online or in apps could be seen by anybody, anywhere, no matter what kind of privacy settings you use. It’s also easy for people to save and share screenshots of things you post. (Harumi)
It is not a rare occasion that we see cyberbullying takes place, no matter if its in the form of body shaming, sexism, racism, etc. This phenomenon causes damage on people’s confidence and self-esteem. Fortunately, we live in a world where when the bad rise, the good will rise even higher. There have been so many social media campaign or movement that has been created and is built out of the notion to defeat cyberbulling and achieve a goal to make social media that’s a safe place for everyone. These campaign rallied and fight mostly against body shaming, unachievable beauty standards and advocated for self love and self identity. One of the most popular campaign that surfaces is BTS’ Love Yourself Campaign. BTS, a South Korean K-Pop Boyband join hands with UNICEF to raise awareness against violence toward children and youth around the world, with the hope of making the world a better place through music. Not only BTS, but DOVE also released a campaign called #MyBeautyMySay in 2016. This campaign that advocated for self love, self acceptance, and standing up for one self, gives hopes and lights for women all around the world that have been judged based on their appearance on a daily basis. (Sabrina)
In my opinion the campaign promoted by Alessia Cara’s ‘Scars to your beautiful’ is a very powerful and profound message. Her campaign tells us to not shackle ourselves with society concept of beauty and tortures ourselves to just keep our image according to the expectations. Social media as it grows, it unfortunately becomes a medium for cyber-bullying where people sneers and critiques others’ appearance if they don’t find it to their likings. Some of us are burdened by that expectations and struggled to keep up with expectations such as dieting for cover girls where they need to starve just to keep their figures well. Some cannot do anything to it if they are survivors of unfortunate accidents and diseases like cancer. Her video encourage viewers to use social media as a platform for positive messages instead of hate message and bullying. The video features people that suffers with the society expectation such as a teenager woman(overweight), young cancer survivor(bald), male adult(accident crippled survivor), transgender, cover girls(diet, fashion, makeups), muscled woman(not feminine), and many other people. It is a powerful campaign that as I said before bring a very powerful message to all of us to let go be happy with how we looks and our scars and not judge other people on our sense of beauty. In the end of day all of those beauty are not tangible and all of us are beautiful and the same human beings who have feelings. Even if other people judges your appearance, it’s just external appearance. The more important thing is our own internal heart appearance, it’s a waste if you are beautiful but your heart is so ugly that you judges other people and mocks them. As we watch this we become more confident with ourselves and feels we are not alone. (Joseph)