GIRL POWER SEPTEMBER 2013 | Page 8

Girl of the Month Megan Landry Megan is 16 and from Canada. She is an artist and she writes all her own songs. Writing songs and making videos is her life. Music has been a part of Megan for as long as she can remember, but in terms of becoming an actual “musician,” she would say it happened gradually over time. She self-taught some basics on the piano as early as age four, then had drum lessons at age seven, piano lessons at age nine, wrote her first song at age 11 first song recording at age 14 Even with all the lessons she took, she did a lot of stuff on her own. She’d keep herself busy with writing poetry as well as writing songs and music scores and did a lot of drawing and photoshop and photography. She would say she became serious about music around age 14 when she first started recording. Apart from that, it’s lived in her for as long as she’s lived herself, it’s part of her. Megan wrote “Stronger” because of bullying in middle school. Basically a large group of girls, some her friends, turned on her in the eighth grade and made her last year of middle school and first few years of high school really miserable. It was a lonely time. She then wrote “Pretty Faces.” She was feeling lost, there’s satisfaction in writing stuff down, almost relief. Songs tell a story, it’s a way of getting it out. Our society is sick. Not in mentality, but in general. The image of beauty has been bruised to such an extent that nobody really understands just what “beautiful,” is anymore. What’s most important for girls to understand is that it isn’t them with the “issues,” it’s the world around them. Trying to fit in a damaged perception will only damage us more. We’re human. “Perfect,” is a mirage, it doesn’t exist. To Megan, imperfection is where beauty lays. Megan loves writing. It’s one of the most amazing things out there and she loves it for some very specific reasons, mostly; you can never be bad at it. Creative writing can be whatever you want it to be. It could be as simple as three words on an open page or a 300 page novel. Megan says she is terrible at subjects like Science and Math in school because they are based on either right or wrong answers. It’s either black or it’s white. With writing, you can dive into every shade of gray in between. There’s no “right’s” and “wrong’s;” you can just pour out whatever’s on your mind. It’s art. You can read it over and perfect it as many times as you want. It’s simply an escape and you can keep it to yourself and never show another soul if that’s what you’d like or you can share it.