Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris Jackson, recently shared the story of her being a target of exploitation of her sexuality on stage.
While discussing her new project, ‘EqualizeHer,’ with Linda Perry and Alisha Ballard, whose mission is to ‘achieve equal representation of women across all aspects of the music industry,’ Jackson shared several stories about her challenges in the industry.
During the interview with American Songwriter, she was asked about the challenges while creating and shaping the project’s mission, where the singer revealed having been told to exploit her sexuality. She explained:
“I’ve also had experience with different management where they’re like, ‘How comfortable are you really exploiting your sexuality on stage?’ I’ve been a model for seven years, I’ve gotten naked in front of photographers. I’ve walked the runway, I’ve done all these things, and I’m fine with that. But that can’t be the main thing. The talent and music back it up. The music has to be first and we can back it up with sex and things later.”
She also revealed not getting any emotional responses from the people whom she told about:
“I tell Linda [Perry] these things, and I had actually never seen the emotional reaction from her when I told that story of a manager asking me how comfortable I was basically being a sex doll, and she’s like, ‘You don’t have to do that.'”
Elsewhere in the interview, she also complained about the people to whom her knowledge and experience don’t matter because she is a woman.
Perry, the founder of the project, believes that girls don’t have to just be sexy on stage in order to be successful and be heard.
Months after the project first took place, Jackson met Perry at the first EqualizeHer live event in Los Angeles in October 2022 and accepted the founder’s invitation to join EqualizeHer to do whatever she could in the name of feminism and the environment.
The initiative also worked together to create a song to be written and produced by an all-women team. You can listen to the song, ‘Hit Your Knees,’ below.
