Alicia & Swizz at this year’s VMAs

There are so many things to get angry about in this world; there are so many atrocities; situations that are scary to think about but need to be shouted about; however, what are some people in the world really upset about at the moment? The fact that Alicia Keys chose to not wear makeup to Sunday night’s MTV VMAs. Yes, you read right, many people are upset about what Alicia Keys decided to do to her very own face!

Today, People magazine had a piece, online, under the headline, “Alicia Keys’ Husband Swizz Beatz Defends Her Makeup-Free VMAs Look”. Swizz Defends a Make-Up Free Look? What? Since when was wearing no make up a crime against humanity? Since when was this something that needed defending? Since when did we become such a fucked up, superficial world?

As summarised succinctly on Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter, “Alicia Keys is a 15-time Grammy® Award-winning singer/songwriter/producer, an accomplished actress, a New York Times best-selling author, an entrepreneur and a powerful force in the world of activism”. With all of those accomplishments, some people still choose to define Alicia by what she does or doesn’t wear on her face!

Not that Alicia has to explain her decision, but back in May she wrote a great piece for Lenny Letter, Alicia Keys: Time to Uncover. In this piece she wrote about why she has chosen not to wear make up. I’m not going to diminish this by trying to put her thoughts into one or two sentences – I’ll let you read it yourself.

After Sunday night’s criticisms, Alicia posted this great statement on twitter, along with a photo of herself.

She is right. Do you! If your you is different to someone else that’s a good thing. If someone is choosing to do something that you are not, it does not mean that they are wrong, or that they are passing judgement on your choices or who you are as an individual. Carbon copies do not make for an interesting world. A world of uniqueness and differences is exciting and wonderful.

I love what Swizz said about all of this ridiculousness on an Instagram video (Sidenote – Alicia didn’t need Swizz to defend her, he was just saying what most of us were thinking!)

“This is deep. Somebody sitting home mad because somebody didn’t wear makeup on their face. Not your face, but they didn’t put makeup on their face because they just didn’t feel like wearing makeup. But you mad because that person didn’t put on makeup to please you? Type of shit is this? ‘Cause you can do whatever you wanna do … She didn’t want to put make up on her face and you mad. You must be mad at a lot of shit. You better look in that mirror and get that ass fixed. Because if you mad at somebody else for not putting make up on their face, and it’s their decision, you got a lot of work to do in life, and we all do, but you sure do!”

I wish there was a way we could just press Ctrl + Alt + Del on the world because it really is time to reboot!