It’s often said that the fears children face at a young age aren’t natural. Instead, they’re created by the environment they find themselves in and the norms in that particular society.
American singer Alicia Keys recently posted a video on Instagram in which she talks about an incident that left her fuming. During a visit to a nail salon with her four-year-old son, Genesis, where he was excited to have his nails painted in rainbow colours. But once his nails were done, he told his mom he no longer wanted them painted. When Alicia asked him why, he said he didn’t think people would like his nails.
“Can you believe this? Four years old. He’s four! And he already understands the concept that someone is gonna judge him because he chose rainbow colours on his nails,” Alicia said in the rant.
She captioned her post: “Less Labels, More Expressions.
“Been thinking about how over labeled and over judged we all are . . . can u feel me??”
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After telling her son that people would love his nails because it showed off his creativity, she encouraged him to keep doing his own thing. She also told him many men love to paint their nails, Essence reports.
“Stick with it. You chose it. You liked it. You do it,” the 15-time Grammy-winning singer told her son.
The incident made the mother of two reflect on how society is quick to judge and put labels on people, making them live in fear of being themselves.
“The way I see it there is masculine and there are feminine energies inside of us all, period. It gets concerning to me that we can’t just explore these different sides of ourselves. These different energies that are within us.”
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“Even for me, myself, I oftentimes express the masculine energy that’s inside of me. And, all the time, if that happens, there are the judgments, and there’s the stereotypes, and there are all the energies that come towards that. And for my boys, it’s similar if they want to express the feminine energy that’s inside of them. There’s all of these judgments, and all these rules, and stereotypes and vibes,” she said.
“It’s really frustrating to me. I’m actually really, really frustrated about it. I ask myself, ‘Why is that? Why can’t we just express the different energies that are inside us?’. We should be able to explore and express our masculine and feminine energies however we want to,” she concluded.
Her husband and father of her children, Swizz Beatz, shares the same sentiments as his wife about their children: “He’s a young King and he can explore and express his creativity at any time! We support it as his parents.”
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