Our Body-Image Inspiration: Singer Meghan Trainor

You may have recognized that gorgeous gal in our body image survey as one of the year’s breakout singers, Meghan Trainor (fun fact: It was her first photo shoot for a fashion magazine ever!). Her single “All About That Bass” is our new self-confidence anthem, and here she explains why writing it was so important to her.

Her album drops in December, but already more than 70 million people have watched—and shaken their stuff to—”All About That Bass,” the hit single written and performed by the 20-year-old, who lives in Nashville with her two kittens. “When I wrote it, the words flew out of my mouth—I had the lyrics down in about 45 minutes,” Trainor says. She admits she was never comfortable as a teen: “I grew up on Nantucket, in Massachusetts, and played football in school. My crowd was all the skinny, beautiful, popular girls, and I was their, like, thicker friend. This one dude I was in love with told me in seventh grade, ‘You’d be so much hotter if you were 10 pounds lighter.’ It crushed me. [But] whenever I said ‘I’m fat,’ my mom always told me—and still does—You need to stop. You are beautiful. Enjoy this now before you get older and look back and wonder, Why didn’t I love myself?'” And that’s the message Trainor is trying to get out to fans: “I hope the song helps girls love themselves more, because they’re adorable. Women too. We should all have a big banner, or maybe a neon sign, in our bedrooms: Every inch of you is perfect.”

Do you love “All About That Bass” as much as we do? What song makes you feel confident?