Alanis Morissette blasts early days in industry, return to 2000s thin aesthetic
Alanis Morissette isn't holding her tongue.
Known for an acerbic tone, the "Jagged Little Pill" singer proved she's not done speaking her mind, calling out the toxicity of her early days in the industry in a new interview with The Guardian that published June 21.
"There was no one to hide behind," she told the outlet of her rise to fame in the 90s. "What I found in terms of the lovely patriarchy, was that at that time if men couldn’t (have sex with) me, they didn’t know what to do with me."
More of an introvert, she told the outlet that when she began looking around the industry during her early days, success was mostly afforded to people "secure in their loudness, à la Courtney Love."
"That seemed to be valued," she told the Guardian. "I was like, 'OK, I'm going to pretend to be an extrovert for the next 25 years.' So, tequila – anything that allowed me to be the life of the party – or if I was doing a talk, Xanax. Anything that would help me pretend I’m not me."
Morissette, who has been open about both her struggles with addiction and with eating disorders, said her current phase in life affords her a new comfort in her own skin.
"Now there's zero desire to present as something that I'm not," she said. "I spent 25 years trying to be someone who didn't have this temperament. At 51, I feel this is just what it is like."
But trends are cyclical and what once made her early years in the industry hard is back again with a vengeance, she said, lamenting the return of the "size zero" aesthetic.
"We thought that whole era was done, right? We sorted this out! Didn’t we?" she said. "Oh, we didn't. We dropped the ball… the hyper-sexualization thing is so boring."