(LENNY) Alicia Keys, June 4, 2016 — Why the musical icon is embracing #nomakeup.

We all get to a point in our lives (especially girls) where we try to be perfect.

Does it start somewhere in second grade after picture day when you wear your frizzy hair out ’cause your mama says it’s beautiful but all your “friends” laugh at you?

You grab the brush and gel and pull your beautiful big hair back into the tightest ponytail you possibly can to contain your unique hair in a bun — hiding a piece of who you are in order to fit into a picture of what others seem to see as perfection.

Yeah, that’s one moment.

Or how about in junior high school? Where all the “pretty” girls are wearing lipstick and eyeliner and mascara. Some of them are so skilled they even look like those models in every magazine you ever read — the ones who made you feel slightly uncomfortable with yourself or misrepresented or just unseen.

It’s another moment where some piece of you realizes that to fit in or be thought of as beautiful, you have to cover up to be a bit closer to perfect.

Yeah, that’s another one.

Trust me, it didn’t just end in junior high. I remember when I first started to be in the public eye. Oh my gawd! Everyone had something to say. “She’s so hard, she acts like a boy, she must be gay, she should be more feminine!” But the truth is, I was just from New York, and everyone I knew acted like that.

Source: Alicia Keys: Time to Uncover