Pink used her VMAs platform to recount an interaction she’d had recently with her six-year-old daughter. Accepting the Video Vanguard award last night — which recognizes an artist’s career achievements — the pop star revealed that her daughter described herself as “the ugliest girl I know.” Her daughter said, “I look like a boy with long hair.”
Her mother’s first instinct was to find out if someone was bullying her kid. “Who said this? Can I kick a six-year-old’s ass?” Pink joked as she told the story. Instead, she put together a slideshow of androgynous musical artists like Annie Lennox, Janis Joplin, and David Bowie to show her daughter. These are artists who “live their truth,” Pink said, and “are probably made fun of every day of their lives and carry on and wave their flag; and inspire the rest of us.”
Pink then admitted to her daughter that her own looks and behavior have been mocked as too masculine — but she hasn’t let that stop her from doing what she wants. “I said to her, ‘Do you see me growing my hair?’ She said ‘No, Mama.’ I said, ‘Do you see me changing my body?’ She said, ‘No, Mama.’ ‘Do you see me changing the way I present myself to the world?’ ‘No, Mama.’ ‘Do you see me selling out arenas all over the world?’ ‘Yes, Mama.’”
With that, Pink concluded her story. “OK baby girl,” she recalled saying. “We don’t change. We take the gravel and the shell and we make a pearl. And we help other people to change so that they can see more kinds of beauty.”
Pink is a three-time Grammy award winner. The artist has also acted in projects like mockumentary “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” and rom-com “Thanks for Sharing.” Her next album, “Beautiful Trauma,” will be released in October.
Check out Pink’s entire VMAs speech below.
