Survivors’ Anthem Series #27: “Unpretty” - TLC, Lea Michele and Dianna Agron
- Shannon Brown
- Mar 14
- 3 min read
Learning to See Myself Clearly
Some survivor anthems give you strength.
Some help you release anger.
And some challenge the lies you were taught to believe about yourself.
This is Survivors’ Anthem # 27:
“Unpretty” - TLC, and then a Mashup Version in Glee by Lea Michele and Dianna Agron.
And when this song came out, it felt like it was speaking directly to me.
When Words Become Beliefs
Growing up in an environment filled with emotional and psychological abuse can distort how you see yourself.
When you hear something enough, especially from someone who is supposed to care about you, it starts to sink in.
You begin to believe it.
For a long time, I believed I was never enough.
Never pretty enough.
Never interesting enough.
Never someone worth loving.
Those messages didn’t come from inside me originally. They came from the constant criticism and degrading words my stepdad directed at me throughout my childhood.
Over time, those words became part of the way I saw myself.
The Power of Hearing the Truth
When “Unpretty” by TLC came out, something about it stopped me in my tracks.
The song captured the pain of constantly feeling like you had to change yourself to be accepted.
The lyrics spoke about insecurity, comparison, and the exhausting pressure to be someone different just to feel worthy.
For someone who had been told again and again that something was wrong with them, the song felt deeply personal.
It reminded me that those feelings were not unique to me.
And more importantly, it planted the seed that maybe the problem was never me to begin with.
The Lies We Learn
One of the hardest parts of surviving emotional abuse is unlearning the identity that someone else forced onto you.
For years I believed the version of myself that had been created through criticism and humiliation.
But the truth is this: those words were never about me.
They were about him.
My stepdad carried anger, resentment, and unhappiness, and instead of confronting those things in himself, he projected them onto the people around him.
Especially me.
Because I was not biologically his, and because I reminded him of my mom, I became an easy target for that resentment.
Understanding that truth took years.
But it changed everything.
When the Song Found Me Again
Later in life, another version of this message found me again.
In Glee, the mashup of “Unpretty / I Feel Pretty” brought the song back into my life in a new way.
That performance captured something incredibly real: the constant tension between how we feel about ourselves and how the world tells us we should feel.
The feeling that we must change ourselves to fit in.
But the truth is simpler and far more powerful.
We don’t need to change ourselves to deserve love or acceptance.
There was never anything wrong with us to begin with.
A Thank You
To TLC, thank you for creating a song that speaks honestly about insecurity, self-worth, and the pressure to change ourselves.
Your music helped countless people recognize that the voices criticizing them were not always their own.
And to the creators of Glee and Lea Michele and Dianna Agron, thank you for bringing this message to a new generation through the powerful mashup of “Unpretty / I Feel Pretty.”
Sometimes hearing the truth more than once is exactly what we need.
What This Anthem Means to Me
For me, this anthem represents one of the hardest lessons in healing:
Learning to see myself clearly.
Not through the lens of abuse.
Not through the words someone else used to define me.
But through the truth.
And the truth is simple.
There was never anything wrong with me.
What’s Next in the Survivors’ Anthem Series
Every song in this series represents a different stage of healing.
Some songs helped me survive.
Some helped me process anger and grief.
Some helped me reclaim my voice.
This anthem represents something equally important, self-worth.
As the series continues, I’ll keep sharing the songs that shaped my journey through survival, healing, and strength.
Because sometimes the most powerful realization a survivor can have is this:
The person you were told you were… was never the truth.
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