Dua Lipa disclosed that she felt compelled to step away from social media following a wave of criticism stemming from a viral dancing video from 2017.
In a conversation with The Guardian coinciding with her new album, The Radical Optimism, the 28-year-old singer reflected on the fallout from becoming an internet meme.
“When people took that snippet of me dancing online and just turned it into a meme,” she recounted,
“and then when I won the best new artist Grammy and people were like, ‘She’s not deserving of it, she’s got no stage presence, she’s not going to stick around.’”
“Those things were hurtful. It was humiliating. I had to take myself off Twitter,” shared the New Rules singer.
Dua further elaborated that she was still in the early stages of her journey as a performer and a musical artist, making it even more challenging to cope with the scrutiny at a young age.
“In the public eye, I was figuring out who I was as an artist, as a performer. All that was happening while I was 22, 23 years old and still growing up. You have to build tough skin. You have to be resilient,” expressed the pop star.
“It never was like I couldn’t get out of bed because of what I thought people thought of me. I didn’t care to that degree. But that’s when it was most heightened for me,” she added.
