It has been a transformative few months for Kesha, who recently decided to drop the dollar sign from her name and change her twitter handle from the self-depricating @keshasuxx to the sweet and simple @kesharose. She seems to have also dropped the "party girl" image from persona. However, in an essay published in Elle U.K. (via MTV) she admits the "party girl" thing was all made up anyway.
"Sure, I've written songs about partying, but my dirty little secret is that I'm actually incredibly responsible. I take my music and career very seriously, and certainly didn't land in this situation from partying," she wrote. "But I was cut off from the outside world and I imagined people making up stories at a time when what I really needed was support."
In the essay she explains the dark side of fame and how the pressures of the music industry, which escalated after a busy 2013, caused her to develop an eating disorder. She checked herself into rehab back in January, and the two-month "alone time" made her become more comfortable in her own skin.
"I've always tried to be a crusader for loving yourself, but I'd been finding it harder and harder to do personally," she wrote. "I felt like part of my job was to be as skinny as possible, and to make that happen, I had been abusing my body. I just wasn't giving it the energy it needed to keep me healthy and strong."
She explains that she her body image issues didn't always exists and how her mother championed the idea of being yourself when she used to get bullied as a kid.
"At home, my mom told me not to worry about what other kids thought and to be proud of myself, but that's easier said than done."
She admitted that her whole crazy "party girl" image just masked her insecurities.
"If someone called me pretty, I'd sneer and smear more glitter on my face. I didn't want to be just pretty -- I was wild, crazy and free. I talked about sex, about drinking," she wrote. "I played confident but still felt like an outcast. The music industry has set unrealistic expectations for what a body is supposed to look like, and I started becoming overly critical of my own body because of that."
She also admitted to feeling hypocritical about writing anthems about individuality, such as "We R Who We R" and "Warrior," but not taking her own advice.
"Those words didn't ring true to me anymore. ...I felt like a liar, telling people to love themselves as they are, while I was being hateful to myself and really hurting my body."
Her time in rehab, however, caused her to feel "a shift" and become aware of her self-worth.
"I'm not fully fixed -- I am a person in progress, but I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem," she said. "Even I need to be reminded that we are who we are. And when I say that, I f-king mean it, now more than ever."
Read the whole essay for yourself here, and let us know what you think in the comments section!
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