Colbie Caillat is one of many celebrities who are tired of seeing themselves photoshopped almost into oblivion, and she recently decided to strike back with a video in which she takes off all the makeup and shows her true self.
“The inspiration came from personal experience of being in the music industry and feeling like I need to always look polished for people to like me. It was frightening at first. Before I was like ‘Cool, this is awesome, I’m excited to do it.’ And then when I got there and I was just in front of the bright lights and HD camera, I was looking at everyone watching the monitor and of course I’m just thinking, Okay, they’re seeing that I have really light eyebrows and they’re probably looking at the mole on my forehead that I should be covering up,” Caillat said.
“Try” is getting a lot of attention and has racked up 15 million views in just a couple of weeks, and Caillat says that even grown men are writing to let her know the video affected them.
“I hoped it would get attention and I hoped it would affect women, and people. I mean I’m even getting grown men telling me that they love this song and this video makes them cry,” she said.
Caillat is not alone in being tired of the way Hollywood and the media can put pressure on women; Ashley Judd wrote an essay The Daily Beast in 2012 after photos of her began circulating online along with the rumors that she’d had plastic surgery.
“Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight over the winter, to a conclusion of plastic surgery?” Judd asked in her essay. “Our culture, that’s who. The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood. It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings.”
Caillat says she hopes the video will inspire her fans to be comfortable in their own skin, and to like themselves a little more.
Image via YouTube