Singer Alicia Keys expressed frustration this week over the fact her four-year-old son, Genesis, did not want to wear his rainbow manicure anymore.
Alicia Keys said more people should embrace their “masculine and feminine energies” after describing how her four-year-old son told her he didn’t want to wear his rainbow manicure anymore.
According to Insider, the “No One” singer said in a video posted to Instagram that her son was originally excited to get his nails painted before having a change of heart after seeing they were rainbow-colored.
“So 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,” Keys said in the video. “And after she painted his nails, he looked at me, he said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want this on my nails.'”
Keys went on to lament how her son believed that people would be judgemental of his rainbow-colored nails.
“And I was like, ‘Why? You were so sure. You were good.’ And he was like, ‘People are not going to like it.’ Can you believe this? Four years old. He’s four! And he already understands the concept that someone’s going to judge him because he chose rainbow colors on his nails,” she continued.
The singer said she encouraged her son to not care what anyone else has to say. “You chose it. You liked it. You do it. Who cares what anybody else says?” Keys allegedly told her son, adding that “a lot of guys paint their nails.”
Genesis allegedly felt better about the situation after Keys gave him a pep talk. She concluded the Instagram video by hoping that people will step outside of gender stereotyping to explore “masculine and feminine energies.”
“It gets concerning to me that we can’t just explore these different sides of ourselves,” she said. “I oftentimes express the masculine energy that’s inside of me. All the time, if that happens, there’s the judgments, and there’s the stereotypes, and there’s all the energy that comes toward that.”
“And for my boys, you know, similar. If they want to express the feminine energy that’s inside of them, there’s all these judgments and all these rules and stereotypes and vibes,” she continued. “It’s really frustrating to me. I’m actually really, really frustrated about it.”
As noted by Insider, Keys received overwhelmingly positive responses from her massive amount of followers.
“This kid. This expression. This parenting. This thinking. THIS is the stuff that will change the world. For the better,” one follower said.
“I loved your feedback to him. So beautiful,” said another.
“He’s a young King and he can explore and express his creativity at anytime! We support it as his parents,” wrote Keys’ husband, the music producer Swizz Beatz.
This past April, actress Charlize Theron told the Daily Mail that she began dressing her three-year-old son like a girl the moment he told her, “I’m not a boy!” Theron also defined parenting as simply celebrating her children as they wish to be, rather than as serving as a guide to help direct children.
“I have two beautiful daughters who, just like any parent, I want to protect and I want to see thrive,” Theron said at the time. “They were born who they are and exactly where in the world both of them get to find themselves as they grow up, and who they want to be, is not for me to decide.”