Now Playing
RCA/Paola KudackiAlicia Keys wants women to know they don’t need to conform to someone’s idea of looking “perfect.”
The 15-time Grammy Award winner appears without makeup in the publicity photo for her latest single, “In Common,” and she writes in an essay for LennyLetter.com, “It is the strongest, most empowered, most free, and most honestly beautiful that I have ever felt.”
Keys says she was “sick of” females having to conform to an image determined by society.
“Women are brainwashed into feeling like we have to be skinny, or sexy, or desirable, or perfect,” she comments. “One of the many things I was tired of was the constant judgment of women. 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.”
Despite her phenomenal success, Keys admits that the pressure to look a certain way caused her to be insecure.
“All of it is so frustrating and so freakin’ impossible,” she states. “I was really starting to feel like that — that, as I am, I was not good enough for the world to see. This started manifesting on many levels, and it was not healthy.”
Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
