‘KIND OF ANGRY’

Nelly Furtado Says Media Used to ‘Take My Hips Down’ and ‘Lighten My Skin’

“By my second album, I guess I was kind of angry about it,” Furtado told People magazine, of the media’s airbrushing of her skin and body.

Singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado says having smash hits in the aughts came with “a lot of airbrushing,” noting the dodgy practice by magazines and media to heavily edit photo subjects—especially women. “I have olive skin, and they’d kind of lighten my skin a lot in photos and kind of take my hips down all the time—they would always kind of cut off in editorials,” she told People. “By my second album, I guess I was kind of angry about it.” That second album, 2003’s Folklore, contains the song “Powerless,” which opens with the couplet, “Paint my face in your magazines, make it look whiter than it seems.” Furtado, 45, was raised in British Columbia, Canada by Portuguese immigrant parents. She noted that her “very matriarchal” family kept her safe from other sketchy show business trappings that other stars endured: “I was one of the lucky ones.” Her latest album, 7, was released last week.