Alessia Cara stripped down at the VMAs to prove an important point

Canadian singer-songwriter Alessia Cara looked absolutely stunning while crooning her hit single “Scars to Your Beautiful” during the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. With her makeup carefully applied, the 21-year-old from Brampton, Ont., brought old Hollywood glam to the stage in a raven black wig and a floor-sweeping scarlet red dress.

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But as the performance went on, black-clad backup dancers stripped off the singer’s wig and gown to reveal a simple black tank, leggings and her natural tresses. Without missing a beat, Cara wiped off her makeup and pulled out her earrings as she belted out her powerful anthem to millions of viewers.

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“You should know you’re beautiful just the way you are / And you don’t have to change a thing, the world could change its heart / No scars to your beautiful, we’re stars and we’re beautiful.”

The song’s empowering chorus, and the bold decision to strip off the very things that society says make her beautiful serve an important reminder, said Cara in an Instagram post, “that beauty isn’t only one look, shape, size or colour. It isn’t even always tangible.”

“It comes in an endless amount of forms and we need to recognize that,” she continued. This is particularly important, since the world both directly and indirectly “tells us that we shouldn’t be happy with ourselves if we don’t fit certain beauty standards.”

The singer pledged to go makeup-​free whenever she performs “Scars,” a song, that in effect, is meant to challenge beauty standards. As she told Glamour, “We all look at ourselves in the mirror and think, I hate this, I wish that were different—from something minor like, ‘I have a pimple today,’ to something major like, ‘I don’t want to live anymore because I don’t think I’m good enough. In ‘Scars,’ I wanted to tell people, ‘There isn’t one way to look beautiful—you are beautiful, and it’s the world that needs to change.’ ”

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“Scars to Your Beautiful” was nominated for three VMAs: Video of the Year, Best Direction and Best Fight Against the System.

Cara also won a Best Dance VMA for “Stay” in her collaboration with Zedd.

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