Kesha, post-rehab: I decided that maybe I do want to try to be pretty

Kesha Rose (the artist previously known as Ke$ha) covers the July issue of Teen Vogue. She’s changed her stage name to a less ironic one (the $ came from being dirt poor as a struggling musician). The kinder, gentler name arrives as Kesha remodels herself after completing rehab for an eating disorder. I’ve been worried about Kesha’s state of mind since she took a voluntary time out from the music industry. Hopefully she won’t be working with fat-shamer Dr. Luke or any of the rest of the team that nearly killed her with their demands on her physicality. Here are some excerpts from Kesha’s comeback interview:

Her rehab visit: “Let’s just get the elephant out of the room. My eating disorder is something I’ve been struggling with for a while. People will make up stories, but I went to rehab for an eating disorder–nothing more and nothing less.”

She was miserable: “Making my last record, Warrior, was a pretty miserable process, and it wore my spirit down. I was fighting like hell to keep my whole irreverent essence and everything raw and visceral that I stand for in it, but in the end I was promoting something that wasn’t the animal I wanted it to be. I decided to face my problem head-on.”

She’s not fake: “My whole message is to love who you are and accept all your beautiful imperfections. When I felt I was slipping into unloving territory with myself, I knew I had to listen to my own advice and correct it. I have a public persona where I need to be fun all the time, and I refuse to be a hypocrite. I felt I needed to get help, not only for myself but also for my fans. My worst fear in life is to be fake.”

Why she spiraled downhill: “To have a breakthrough you have to have a breakdown, and I definitely went through both of those–in hindsight, it saved my life. Things got worse because I’m in an industry where people photograph your body and zoom in and blow it up and put it on the cover of magazines, and other people make terrible comments. It really messed with my head, and I realized I couldn’t do it by myself. The decision to take control of it is the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and this is coming from someone who dives with sharks and jumps out of airplanes for fun. The whole process has made me so much stronger and ready to take my life by the horns and make a record that I’m going to be proud of and not care what anybody else thinks!”

Her new image: “I decided that maybe I do want to try to be pretty. I want to just try.”

[From Teen Vogue]

I’m interpreting Kesha’s use of the word of “pretty” as less of a physical attribute than an attitude shift. She’s not going to go out of her way to be raunchy — like when she drank her own pee and flashed her booty on Instagram. That would be excellent! I want Kesha to be about her catchy music instead of stunt-queen antics. Kesha says she wrote 14 songs with a toy Casio keyboard during her two-month rehab stint, and that sounds like a great new beginning. I wish her much luck.

Photos courtesy of Teen Vogue

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