Sara Bareilles credits years of feeling "unlovable" and "invisible" with helping her feel enormous "empathy and compassion" for the struggles her young fans go through today, she told HuffPost Live on Tuesday.
"I have a lot of young female fans, and young women are really important to me, and I want to continue to develop a relationship encouraging them to learn how to love themselves," the singer explained. "I don't exactly know what I'm doing in all of that, but it's a message I know I need to hear, and I see it in young people of any gender, but young women especially."
Too often young women are confronted with "stresses and so much comparison that has to do with our physical beings," the songstress lamented, noting that her years as a chubby kid made her feel like an "outsider."
"I identify really strongly with that psyche -- the people that feel sort of invisible or misunderstood but not in a super overt way. It's a more internal way of feeling unseen," Bareilles said.
Recent years spent in the spotlight haven't overshadowed those days of hardship for her either, Bareilles said.
"Those childhood insults don't ever leave you, and I still look in the mirror and see that little girl who struggles and feels ugly and unlovable and all of those things, who just wanted a boyfriend so bad."
Watch more from Sara Bareilles' conversation with HuffPost Live here.
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