Shine Like a Popstar: Lessons from P!nk

The indomitable Pink turns up the volume on what it means to be human and accept the hardest parts about ourselves

Since we have a few new faces out there, I wanted to share what happens over here in our little fierce corner of the universe. I share thoughts, musings, stories and studies to inspire our minds and remind our spirits that there are many ways to find inner strength when we need it. If haven’t already, please share this newsletter with someone who would like it. I’d really appreciate it!

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If today’s newsletter feels long, just skim, check out the videos but don’t miss the end! I want you to get the juicy good part. As you may have noticed about my newsletters, they often follow this format Act 1 - I talk about the thing that’s probably affecting our lives right now, then Act 2 - I point out something cool happening out in the world, then in Act 3 - I bring it home with some kernels to excite your spirit. Now, let’s dig in!

Emotional check-in time

Well hello, and welcome to the holiday season! Quite quickly we’ve made it to the end of the year, and between the tentpoles in our normal routines—sleeping, eating, working, what have you—we have to find time for other priorities—maybe shopping, entertaining, cooking/ordering special meals, packing for trips, organizing pet boarding, getting ready for guests, navigating an accelerated social schedule, or whatever it is you might have on your plate.

I call it Twinkly Light Season.

Partially because it’s when nearly every home and business brandishes small bright lights (which I LOVE!), but also it’s when we’re trying our hardest to sparkle. …Just exactly when it’s actually hardest to sparkle.

Whether or not you have more on your social calendar, you most certainly have more on your emotional schedule with feelings swirling around, even those that don’t originate with you. (Or is that just me, and is that why this newsletter is going out a week late?).

I’m here to say that Twinkly Lights Season can be a lot; it’s emotionally barbed and there’s a ton of pressure to shine extra bright all over the place, all the time. And from my experience, the more we force ourselves to be extra twinkly, the bigger the chance of crashing and burning.

And with all that pressure, maybe it’s the time when the less twinkly parts of our personalities (the insecurities, underlying anger, sadness, hurt) assert themselves the most…exactly when we’re trying so hard to be an inspiration for a Hallmark film.

It’s hard to love these “unlovable” parts.

You know what I mean — the parts of ourselves we don’t like, the bits we don’t want to show anyone. Annoyingly, the little idiosyncrasies we try hardest to suppress often become the most obvious—like a bucking bull we can’t control—when we’re under stress. And as you may have already learned (the hard way, or course); the harder we try to shove them down, the more obvious they are.

Maybe we want to hide them for good reason. Like, maybe they royally f-up our interpersonal relationships or jobs.

It makes sense that maybe we decide it’s just easier to put up a wall and not chance getting tripped up in these emotional triggers.

And so maybe, instead of facing these little dark bits eye-to-eye, we’d rather create space between ourselves and others.

That feels good. Safe.

For a while.

Until we realize that all we have are wide open spaces and no close relationships. All that distance means we don’t have a person to turn to when we’re at our lowest. No one to bare our Inner Yuk to (yes, I’m making that an official term), and no one who loves us in spite of ourselves.

There’s a term for transforming our Inner Yuk from a liability into an asset: it’s called Vulnerability.

Vulnerability is a helluva thing; we don’t get close relationships without it. And it only works if it’s a two way street—if we also bear witness to and hold space for someone else’s Inner Yuk. That equal energy exchange is vital for feeling safe and secure.

Photo by Karly Santiago on Unsplash

But truly, it’s preposterous, this vulnerability thing

Like, why would we want to do that? Expose our most intimate parts to someone else?! Obviously the other person will just laugh at our weaknesses, or run away altogether, or use those weaknesses as ammunition at some later time. Clearly that’s what will happen if we lower our walls and expose our hidden parts. There’s no way someone could respect us once they see the deep stormy bits we struggle to contain (that anger / misery / sadness / meanness / fear that we loathe within ourselves). We’ve worked our whole goddamn lives to be as good as we can be and it seems absurd to reveal any of the weaknesses to the people to whom we most want to impress.

But what if you did?

And not just to your most trusted loved ones, but what if you cataloged your many weaknesses for millions of people to view and judge?

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Meet international superstar, Pink

If you weren’t devoted to Pop radio or MTV in the early Aughts, you might have her confused with other pop culture starlets of her era—Brittney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Gwen Stefani, Avril Lavigne, Shakira, and more—yet Pink has been differentiating herself from her fellow arena-filling contemporaries since her early albums. In that era of the early 2000s, when the whole goal (of most endeavors, certainly anything relating to pop culture) was to be superficially appealing, Pink wrote songs pointing out that she wasn’t like the other seemingly interchangeable and “perfect” looking blonde paper dolls—Paris or Brittany or Jessica Simpson¹.

And while she played the underdog to these women and their paparazzi-amplified images twenty years ago, it’s Pink who’s the reigning queen these days.

Picking up the mantel from her idols Madonna and Janis Joplin², she wasn’t afraid to be a little off-center from the spotlight, etching her own persona even if that bucked against the superficial perfection that the music labels were churning out in other pop stars at the turn of the new millennium. Even her biggest pop anthems belied some level of hurt or unexpected candor, like in in 2008’s So What, singing about other women sitting higher on the social hierarchy (“The waiter just took my table And gave it to Jessica Simps”) or publicly admitting that your marriage is breaking up (“I guess I just lost my husband/ I don't know where he went”). But it was those admissions that made her so great. According to The Guardian³, this became “her calling card: candid diary-entry lyrics mixed with slick, arena-friendly pop-rock.”

And I’m so here for it.

I liked her music then (and still do!) for the pop-punk-rock lyrics I could wail along to (um hello, Raise Your Glass is a scream-along anthem which is also an underdog anthem, case in point: “So raise your glass if you are wrong / In all the right ways / All my underdogs / We will never be never be, anything but loud / And nitty gritty dirty little freaks”).

But now, as a woman just about Pink’s age with a husband and young child, I’m in awe at how she commands the stage with stories and lyrics that expose all those vulnerabilities and she’s continued to get even more intimate about her imperfections even as she gets more successful.

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Pink IRL

I took my love for Pink from car-singing and YouTube-watching to IRL and attended Pink’s Trustfall arena tour when it came through Austin in November. I was delighted in every way. Her voice is in-cred-i-ble. When she riffs a cappella or shares an acoustic version of one of her bangers (click below), it’s breathtaking. Beyond her searing vocals, there’s also her soaring aero-acrobatics as she flies around the arena in a harness on wires.

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But what what’s really jaw dropping

But what what’s really jaw dropping is her candor in her conversations with the audience—she’s just up there owning her shit, airing her weaknesses and sharing it with a few thousand friends. And for all her candor, I can imagine that this is the shit she probably wishes wasn’t hers. The stuff she’s worked on for years and years in therapy and is owning but also not excusing.

Lyrics from Please Don’t Leave Me:
I don't know if I can yell any louder
How many times have I kicked you out of here
Or said something insulting? (Da-da-da-da)
I can be so mean when I wanna be
I am capable of really anything
I can cut you into pieces
When my heart is broken. …

How did I become so obnoxious?
What is it with you that makes me act like this?
I've never been this nasty (Da-da-da-da-da)
Can't you tell that this is all just a contest?
The one that wins will be the one that hits the hardest
But, baby, I don't mean it
I mean it, I promise.

Pink says she doesn’t write love songs, she writes “warnings.” About not just the underside of romantic relationships but her role and lackings therein.

Refreshing…wait, why aren’t there more songs like this on pop radio?

She’s there talking about break ups, fights, ugliness in a relationship, loss of love, fighting for the love you f*ed up. As a married person—damn, that feels liberating to hear someone up there saying, it’s not always easy or pretty but also that’s ok and we can all work on ourselves.

These admissions help us all feel closer to her and more loving towards our own weaknesses. Of course, me being me, during the concert, I was overwhelmed at this SUPREME example of Resilience and now she’s created an entire brand around her differences and vulnerabilities.

Pink’s not a thin-lipped, frail little waif (cue those pop starlets from Y2K), and in the early 2000s, this would have felt like a liability. She’s strong and bold and uses those as highlights in her shows; even her big, articulate mouth and lips have been embraced, embellished even more as a caricature and used as the centerpiece of the entire stage and even as backup dancers.

Now, what if you and I owned those mistakes that we make over and over again, and learned to get better but also learned that there’s no linear path to self improvement?

What would happen when you not only share those quibbly emotional reactions that get triggered when we’re at our weakest not just with people we’re close to, but blown up and exposed for all to see?

Pink leaning into her “flaws” with big mouth backup dancers. Bam!

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If I can leave you with one wish

Thinking about this demanding Twinkly Light Season, the promise (or stress) of a new year just around the corner (fresh with no mistakes in it⁴), and our weaknesses and all that we wish we weren’t, here’s my wish for you: no matter how imperfect you feel—find the thing that’s you, and own it.

Blow it up.

MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR TRUTH.

OWN YOUR STORY.

Find the path forward that highlights the version of yourself that you keep hidden.

Shine as your true, beautiful self.

This is even more pressing and prescient if you’ve been through the ringer. …if the person you are today isn’t the person you envisioned or ever wanted to be.

Maybe because of a diagnosis or chronic disease

…or after a divorce or break up

…on the upheaval after the birth of a child

…in the middle of an overwhelming fertility journey

…in the face of mental health challenges

…after a layoff or before a disorienting job change

…and so many other significant moments that trip us up along the path.

Or any life moment when we get caught up about not being like the other girls/ the competition / or like anyone else.

THIS IS YOUR TIME.

It may not feel perfect, but, oh, baby, we can do it.

Let’s channel some of the fun that Pink’s having up there. And boy, doesn’t she look happy?

Because it’s not just Pink who can shine bright—

You’re a goddamn rockstar.

PS: This is someone’s comment on YouTube that really sums the beauty of Pink up so well

“I've seen Pink live three times, and nothing quite beats it when she flies all over the place with those kick ass vocals. And yet she's down to earth, very few acts have an energy like that. Her shows are a combination of: a bit of crazy, a bit of kick ass attitude, a bit of flying, usually at least one beautiful acoustic section that is always such a treat, and of course lots of jokes and humor and party vibe - but full on realness. She does it all with such great energy and it just goes right into you and then you feel good too. If I'd have to compare her to any other artist I have seen, based on the kind of energy she gives, I could only compare her to Tina Turner whom I have seen twice - and you have to have seen Tina live to know what that transmission of good energy means. Awesome vocalist, songwriter, performer, human being.”

1. My apologies to Paris and Brittney and Jessica — you are all very unique individuals, but I think we can all agree that in 2003, you were all shopping at American Rag on LaBrea and Fred Segal in Santa Monica in the same boot-cut way low rider jeans.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_(singer)

3. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/13/pink-monogamy-is-work-havent-had-sex-in-a-year-beautiful-trauma

4. Where my Anne of Green Gables fans out there?