Alicia Keys encourages 4-year-old son afraid of being judged for wearing rainbow nail polish: ‘Who cares what anybody else says?’
Alicia Keys took a moment to teach her son it was perfectly normal to get his nails painted the colors fo a rainbow. Sharing a story on Instagram Saturday, November 9, about her 4-year-old son, Genesis Ali, the 'No One' singer said the learning moment came after he recently joined her on a trip to the nail salon.
“He tells the lady that he wants rainbow colors on his nails. And she brings all of these colors and she paints each nail a different color,” she recalled in the Instagram video.
However, after getting his nails painted in the colors he wanted, Keys said her son changed his mind and became afraid of how other people will judge him when they see his painted nails.
“After she painted his nails, he looked at me and he said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want this on my nails,’” Keys said. “He was like, ‘People are not going to like it.’ Can you believe this? He’s four and already understands the concept that someone is going to judge him because he chose [the] rainbow color[s] on his nails,” she added.
The singer, who believes everyone has both masculine and feminine energies, said she then told her son to stick to his original decision and added, "Who cares what anybody else says?"
“That made him feel better, but it just got me to thinking how completely judged we are all the time,” Keys said, lamenting that most people are scared of exploring "these different sides of ourselves” because of the fear of being different. In the caption of the 2-minute-long video, Keys called for “less labels” and “more expressions."
“I oftentimes express the masculine energy that’s inside of me,” Keys shared. “And, all the time, if that happens, there are the judgments, and there’s the stereotypes, and there are all the energies that come towards that.” Keys also shares her other son Egypt Daoud, 9, with husband Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean.