In a powerful essay for Lena Dunham’s newsletter ‘Lenny’, published this year in May, Alicia discussed how her years in the public eye had altered her perception of ‘beauty and perfection.’
Keys reportedly got so sick of people always having something to say about her appearance, that she decided to be herself and not care about it anymore.
“She’s so hard, she acts like a boy, she must be gay, she should be more feminine!’ But the truth is, I was just from New York, and everyone I knew acted like that,” she stated.
Keys further added that the harsh, judgemental world of entertainment turned her into a ‘chameleon’, and that she was constantly changing so that the world would ‘accept her’.
Keys would always be worried about what people would think of her if she stepped out of the house without makeup, and she was worried if someone would post it on social media.
“These were the insecure, superficial, but honest thoughts I was thinking. And all of it, one way or another, was based too much on what other people thought of me.”
“Before I started my new album, I wrote a list of all the things that I was sick of,” she said in her Lenny essay. “And one was how much women are brainwashed into feeling like we have to be skinny, or sexy, or desirable, or perfect.”
“One of the many things I was tired of was the constant judgment of women,” she said.
“The constant stereotyping through every medium that makes us feel like being a normal size is not normal, and heaven forbid if you’re plus-size. Or the constant message that being sexy means being naked. All of it is so frustrating and so freakin’ impossible.”
