Life is confusing sometimes. While that statement is a rather general one, it is once again applicable today because yes, again, life is confusing. Our latest example of this phenomenon is the “uproar” created by the simple fact that Alicia Keys chose to attend the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards sans make-up. Hold on, let’s just repeat that: People are mad that Keys hit up the VMAs minus make-up.
See? Life is confusing sometimes.
The fact that Keys did in fact attend Sunday night’s awards show without make-up should have come as a surprise to no one. In May Keys took to Lenny Letter, the weekly feminist newsletter created by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, to explain why she was dropping make-up from her life.
“I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing.”
Hey, you don’t want to wear make-up? Totally fine with me. Yet for some reason, it is not fine with some folks who watched Sunday’s show, many of whom predictably took to social media to express their anger, disgust and shock. By Monday night, Keys’ husband Swizz Beatz felt the need to address the uproar via Instagram, doing so with a mixture of sadness, disbelief and muted confusion.
“This is deep,” he said in an Instagram video. “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 tell y’all don’t wear no makeup. She just said that she’s not vibin’ with the makeup all the way 100 percent like that. That’s kinda her thing that she wanna do.”
You can watch the full video above. Makes sense to me. We can all move on now, right?
