Camila Cabello Says She Felt Pressure to "Sexualize" Her Image While in Fifth Harmony
But it still happens. Britney Spears—a pop music veteran with a legion of loyal followers—told a radio station in 2013 that she still feels pressure to be provocative. "A lot of sex goes into what I do," Spears said. "But, sometimes, I would like to bring it back to the old days, when there was one outfit through the whole video and you're dancing the whole video and there's not that much sex stuff going on."
Selena Gomez—a singer with arguably just as many devoted fans as Spears—feels a similar heat. "I am surrounded by people who are supposed to guide me, and some of them have and others haven't," Gomez said in 2014. "They pressure me. There's so much pressure. 'You gotta be sexy. You gotta be cute. You gotta be nice. You gotta be all these things.' They tell me what to wear, how to look, what I should say, how I should be. Until recently, I had given in to that pressure."
Yes, even established pop queens (whose fans will devour their music no matter what) have people strong-arming them into playing the sex card. This makes any saucy video they release just feel wrong. Watching Spears lead a bondage circus in the "Work Bitch" video isn't empowering if it was RCA's idea.
And that leads us to Kesha. When the pop star hit the charts in 2010 with “TiK ToK," we celebrated her unfiltered "party girl" personality. Her individuality and sex-positive lyrics were refreshing. Finally, a pop star who just wanted to have fun!
But, now, we've learned that Dr. Luke—the record producer who Kesha would later accuse of sexual assault—is the one who allegedly calculated her entire "party girl" persona.
"Something that was always told to me is: ‘You’re fun. We’re going to capitalize on that,’” Kesha recently told The New York Times. “I was like, ‘I am fun, but I’m a lot of other things.’ But Luke’s like: ‘No, you’re fun. That’s all you are for your first record.’ ” (Kesha also alleged that Dr. Luke urged her to dumb down her lyrics to complement this lush character.)
