Alicia Keys is sharing her story in her book “More Myself,” and in it, she reveals that she found herself in some pretty precarious situations early on in her career.
The Grammy-winning singer and songwriter detailed an uncomfortable incident with a photographer who insisted on having total privacy while he took her picture in 2000 when she was just 19.
READ MORE: Alicia Keys and Boys II Men deliver touching tributes to Kobe Bryant
“When I emerge from the dressing room, there’s just the two of us on set. ‘Open up your shirt a little,’ he directs while firing off a flurry of camera snaps. 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,” she writes in the memoir, according to the Daily Mail.
Alicia Keys on the infamous Dazed Magazine cover back in 2001 pic.twitter.com/KC1MJjSOB6
— 🗝 (@DiaryOfKeysus) March 25, 2020
“‘Pull the top of your jeans down a bit in the front,’ he urges. If I say no, what doors will be closed to me? I swallow my misgivings, tuck my thumb between the denim and my skin, and obey.”
READ MORE: Alicia Keys opens up about absent father in new book: ‘It left a hole in me’
The mother of two didn’t name the photographer she described but admitted she was humiliated by the experience.
“This isn’t about me showing some skin, which I’ll do on my own terms, for my own purposes, in the coming years. It’s about feeling manipulated. It’s about being objectified,” she writes.
“I am beyond embarrassed, ashamed that I’ve sold part of myself … Had Jeff [Keys’ manager] been in there, he would’ve voiced what I couldn’t at the time: ‘Hell no. Close that shirt. Take your hand off your tit. And you’re not going to yank down your jeans’.”
Alicia Keys continues to inspire fans across the country through her work and her candor and “More Myself” is sure to give us a glimpse of what her journey has been like.
The post Alicia Keys claims she was ‘manipulated’ into posing topless appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3bNDQdH
