Janet Jackson is opening up about her journey.
With the release of her upcoming documentary tracking her life and career, the superstar songstress granted a rare cover interview to Allure with Pulitzer prize-winning writer Robin Givhan.
While delving into her nearly five-decade journey through the entertainment industry as the baby sister of a superstar family, Jackson got frank with Givhan about her body image and the diligent work she’s had to do to find comfort in the skin she’s in.
“I was never a girly girl. I was always a tomboy,” she explained. “So it was always about pants, suits, even as an early teenager…always loving black and never wanting to expose any part of my body. I felt most comfortable to cover it up to here.”
Moving from covered-up tomboy to skin-baring seductress, Jackson’s variousaria-label="Janelle Monae (opens in a new tab)" href="https://ift.tt/3CykYgj" target="_blank">Janelle Monae; notoriously redefining what’s considered sexy by way of what they decide not to reveal with their fashion choices.
Meanwhile, her body-baring, sensual Janet. era opened doors for artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Miley Cyrus to bare as much as they like and embrace their sexual expression.
You’d be hard-pressed to have never seen that infamous topless photoshoot featuring nothing but a pair of male hands covering Jackson’s breast. The snap ended up being not only one of Rolling Stone‘s most famous cover shots, but also the album art of her 1993 release Janet. But Jackson reveals she had a major comfort hurdle to jump to express that part of her personality.
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That was all about “embracing me and trying to learn to love me for me, my body, all of that,” she said. “Trying to feel comfortable in embracing that. Throwing myself in the lion’s den. Just going for it, wanting to do something different.”
“It was something very tough, very difficult,” she added, explaining that it took a lot of inner work on her behalf. “But I’m glad I walked through it. I’m really glad I got in. It was a way of accepting and loving, accepting yourself and your body.”
Whereas the “rules” for female entertainers were more hard and fast in the 80’s and 90’s, that type of open self-acceptance is commonplace for stars of today – a fact which Janet absolutely loves.
“[Women are now] comfortable in their skin, in their size, in being full-figured,” she said, nodding to Lizzo in particular. “As opposed to back in the day. You had to
The post Janet Jackson Talks Pioneering Body Positivity, Aging Gracefully appeared first on Essence.
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