Powerhouse singer Alicia Keys just dropped her new memoir: “More Myself: A Journey,” a book that is described as “an intimate, revealing look at one artist’s journey from self-censorship to full expression.” In the book, she talks about what it’s like outside the spotlight, like, the “complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection.”
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According to Page Six, the 39-year-old detailed the time she felt manipulated by a photographer during a photo shoot when she was just 19. Alicia explained how the photog convinced her team that he needed to photograph her alone and then told her, “Open up your shirt a little” and “Pull the top of your jeans down a bit in the front.”
“My spirit is screaming that something is wrong, that this feels sleazy. But my protests, lodged in the back of my throat, can’t make their way out,” Keys writes in her memoir. “I swallow my misgivings, tuck my thumb between the denim and my skin, and obey,” Page Six quotes. From there, Alicia said she went home and cried in shame.
“This isn’t about me showing some skin, which I’ll do on my own terms, for my own purposes, in the coming years,” she writes. “It’s about feeling manipulated. It’s about being objectified.” “I now understand why the photographer wanted my team out of that room,” she writes. “A nineteen-year-old girl is more pliable than a set of her grown-ass managers,” Page Six quotes.
Alicia explained that her team was livid over the photos which made her even more embarrassed. But, as painful as that was to go through, Alicia used it as a learning experience.
“I swear that I’ll never again let someone rob me of my power,” Keys writes, adding, “It’s a promise I still work to keep, Page Six quotes.
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