The talented songstress and all round cool mama is shunning the lipstick and the eyeliner for a life of realness and integrity – and she has never felt better.
In a rare snapshot of rawness and vulnerability, typically so far removed from celebrity culture, Alicia Keys opens up about the insecurities that plagued her, most of which stemmed from her physical appearance.
Penning an essay for Lena Dunhan’s Lenny Letter, she opens up about the walls she built over the years, the fears that festered over her image, and the consequential reliance on makeup to make her feel ‘beautiful’.
She became so obsessed with image, she was fearful every time she left the house without makeup. Fearful she may be snapped and plastered on tabloids. Fearful a fan may ask for a photo and may post it. Fearful of herself without makeup.
Keys acknowledges her life lacked a sense of probity and simply a sense of being. That she became so chameleonic she lost who she was – in an effort to prove to the ‘they’s’.
Arriving at a shoot one day, having just come from the gym, with a scarf under her baseball cap, sweatshirt on, and a face free of makeup, photographer Paolo Kudacki asked to photograph her. Keys panicked. She asked her:
“Now?! Like right now? I want to be real, but this might be too real!!”
And just like that, she shot her. Raw, real, exposed and with #nomakeup.
The walls she’d built crashed down around her. Lost in this world of perception and judgment, she notes this was a trigger point – swearing it was the “strongest, most empowered, most free, and most honestly beautiful that [she] ever felt.”
Her saving grace too came in the form of meditation. In cultivating this sense of self, she feels strength, conviction and clarity like never before. She has since given up makeup for good – including for performances and photoshoots.
For someone of Keys’ celebrity standing, such a problem is obviously exacerbated, with the prying and condemnatory eyes of the entire world having an opinion. However, it too applies to women (and men) everywhere, particularly young girls. This age of social media, photoshopping, face tuning and filtering is spurring a culture of ‘perfectionism’ like never before. The timing of Keys’ statement could not be more timely.
Despite having its critics, who have noted the ease of someone who looks like Keys to quit makeup because she is ‘beautiful’, her stance of integrity over superficiality is nothing short of inspiring. At the end of the day, beauty is subjective. She sums it up most eloquently:
“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.”
Let the #nomakeup revolution fall upon us swiftly.
Read her empowering letter here.
