Just The Way You Are

“When I compliment her she won’t believe me
And it's so, it's so, sad to think that she don't see what I see
But every time she asks me do I look ok, I say
When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change
Cause you're amazing, just the way you are”

Just The Way You Are – Bruno Mars

Ahh, the song which captured the hearts of girls worldwide. The same song which made men cringe. It made girls believe there was a perfect man who said all these beautiful things about us and told us how pretty we are and he would never, ever want us to change, ever. The idea might be a bit of a stretch of reality, but a girl can dream, right? But the song did a lot more than these cheesy things; it helped girls believe in their physical appearance.

A survey conducted in Britain found women look in a mirror up to 71 times a day. I find this surprising, not because it implies women are vain, but because mirrors are scary objects and rarely show us what we want. When people look at us, they do not see what we see in a mirror. Very few people are able to look in a mirror and not point out their flaws, regardless what a guy, or a song, or even our mums, says to us.

Bruno Mars says one thing in here which really gets me. He says he would not change a thing, but of course, we would. Whether it be the shape of our nose or the slant of our jaw or the colour of our eyes, we would want to change the feature we believe just isn’t right. So when a complete stranger sings a song about not wanting to change anything on a special girl and calling her amazing, should we think this is sung especially to us?

 We should. Why? Because we are amazing just the way we are. But sometimes we forget it. It’s not like we are delusional and believe Bruno Mars is going to track us down and ask him to marry us. But if a bit of encouragement from Bruno Mars makes us believe in ourselves and accept the compliments we receive, then I’m all for it.