Barbie is universally beloved, except in the eyes of The Academy and Shakira. On Monday morning, April 1, Shakira was revealed as the latest Allure cover star. In the accompanying profile, writer Patricia Alfonso Tortolani asked Shakira if she’d watched Barbie. The Colombian icon confirmed she watched the movie, then indulged a “long pause” before giving her full review.
“My sons absolutely hated it,” Shakira said. “They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent. I’m raising two boys. I want ’em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society, and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.”
Shakira shares 11-year-old Milan and nine-year-old Sasha with her ex-partner Gerard Piqué. Her sons are featured on “Acróstico” from Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, her first album in seven years.
“I was in the mud,” Shakira told Allure. “I had to reconstruct myself, to reunite all the pieces that had fallen apart.”
She added, “Making this music has shown me that my pain can be transformed into creativity. The songs are full of anecdotes and some very intense emotions I have experienced in these two years. But creating this album has been a transformation in which I have been reborn as a woman. I have rebuilt myself in the ways I believe are appropriate. No one tells me how to cry or when to cry, no one tells me how to raise my children, no one tells me how I become a better version of myself. I decide that.”