I have a problem with men that are supposed to be R&B artists that talk about women in a certain way, because you're supposed in the cornerstone of uplifting love in a sense.
It is not a dirty word, "feminism." I just think that women belong in the human population with the same rights as everybody else... The problem is, "A feminist looks like this, or is like that." We are taught not to like ourselves as women, we are taught what we're supposed to look like, what our measurements are supposed to be. I never hear what measurements men are supposed to be. Just women.
Women really are not supposed to be imaginative. That creativity of this kind is supposed to belong to men. You know, because women make babies. I find the double standards shocking.
I felt that I really couldn't be creative with opera. You're supposed to sound this way here. You're supposed to crescendo here. You're supposed to do that. I had no sense of identity while singing that kind of music.
There's this ridiculous idea that I'm a gender traitor because I'm not a feminist. I'm supposed to be part of a sisterhood: you're automatically supposed to support all women just because you have the same genitals as them, which doesn't make sense.
There are things that certain people aren't supposed to talk about and they're supposed to keep sheltered and go to psychologists and they try to figure them out on their own. But at the end of the day, we're all human.
I started reading all these men's magazines, trying to follow all the tips: what you're supposed to wear, what you're supposed to have, things you're supposed to say, and all the exercises you're supposed to do.
There are certain things men will never understand about women. We'll never get it. And you're supposed to be nice to them. Because they can hurt you.
I love that because that's what I'm supposed to be doing - whether it's accepted b everybody or not. I'm supposed to be pushing that envelope and trying new things. And people are supposed to say, Hov, you might have went too far.
My parents are artists; in their world, in the world of modern artists, you are supposed to just go into your studio and tune everything out, and your entire relationship with your work is supposed to be a super private one. That was the way to do it and you weren't deeply truly artistic if that wasn't the way you were engaging the press.
Artists talk about art in sort of straightforward terms, more like the way you talk about plumbing fixtures. Does it function well? Does it bring the hot water up from the cellar efficiently, or does it lose too much thermodynamic energy in the process? Artists are also very ruthless with each other and can be very brutal in evaluating each other's work because their criteria is almost more mechanistic. Does it do what it's supposed to be doing in an efficient way? That doesn't mean that intention is not part of the conversation, but it's not the foreground.
I think so many people give us ideas of what we are. I think as women especially, because we're sensitive by nature, we're more vulnerable, we absorb other people's ideas about what we're supposed to think or who we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to act.
All artists are anarchists in some way - some more extreme than others, but it's something that I think artists are supposed to do. We're supposed to present a different angle on everything, and I certainly think it is [art] as much as poetry, in my opinion.
Men give love because they want sex. Women give sex because they want love. That's the difference between men and women. Ever notice how when we talk about our love lives, it's always about a man? Singular. All most of us want is one good man. But when men talk, it's about women. Plural. They want as many as they can get.
One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It's not okay. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It's supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal... but also procreative. That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen... This is special and it needs to be seen as special.
It's fascinating that people, there's so many people now who will make judgments based on what you look like. I'm black. So I'm supposed to think a certain way. I'm supposed to have certain opinions. I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them.
Like, you can't tell a certain race, like, 'You're supposed to act this way, and you're not supposed to act this way because of what color you are,' like, that's just holding everybody back, you know what I'm saying?