Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means if you click on the link and purchase an item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.
Alicia Keys penned a moving and very humble Lenny Letter about self-acceptance. Over the years she has encountered many obstacles and insecurities that did not end in adolescence, they continued even after hitting it big. “Before I started my new album, I wrote a list of all the things that I was sick of. 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. 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.”
In one song I wrote, called “When a Girl Can’t Be Herself,” it says,
In the morning from the minute that I wake up / What if I don’t want to put on all that makeup / Who says I must conceal what I’m made of / Maybe all this Maybelline is covering my self-esteem
No disrespect to Maybelline, the word just worked after the maybe. But the truth is … I was really starting to feel like that — that, as I am, I was not good enough for the world to see.
And the exuses and self-doubt are over for Keys, “Cause I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing.”
Photo from A. Keys
