Just before singer-songwriter Alicia Keys lifted off like a rocket in the music industry, she said she was “manipulated” into posing topless as a teenager by a photographer.
In excerpts from her new memoir, More Myself: A Journey, Keys, 39, said she is still “beyond embarrassed” that she allowed the unnamed shutterbug to convince her to partially disrobe when she was 19.
Keys wrote that just before the release of her critically acclaimed and pop culture smash debut album, Songs in A Minor, Keys knew something was wrong when the photographer refused to take pictures with anyone else on the set.
“When I emerge from the dressing room, there’s just the two of us on set. ‘Open up your shirt a little,’ he directs while firing off a flurry of camera snaps. My spirit is screaming that something is wrong, that this feels sleazy. But my protests, lodged in the back of my throat, can’t make their way out,” Keys wrote, according to The Daily Mail.
“‘Pull the top of your jeans down a bit in the front,’ he urges. If I say no, what doors will be closed to me?” she wrote. “I swallow my misgivings, tuck my thumb between the denim and my skin, and obey.”
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