Shakira is ALLURE’s April Cover Star!

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In her cover story with ALLURE, the three-time Grammy winner, Shakira, opens up about creating a new album after a seven-year hiatus and a very public divorce from her husband, describing “I was in the mud.” She also discusses how her music transforms her pain into creativity, how she feels like a new empowered version of herself, and why she and her sons were not fans of the BARBIE movie. 

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On releasing a new album after a seven-year hiatus and a public divorce: “I want this music to build bridges, to empower people, to help women discover their own strengths. I was in the mud, I had to reconstruct myself, to reunite all the pieces that had fallen apart.”

On how making her new album transformed her: “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.”

On having mixed feelings about the BARBIE movie: “My sons absolutely hated it. 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.”

Writer: Patricia Alfonso Tortolani
Photographer: Emmanuel Monsalve
Stylist: Shibon Kennedy
Hair: Orlando Pita
Makeup: Grace Ahn
Manicure: Andrea Vieira

[Photo Credit: Emmanuel Monsalve for ALLURE Magazine]

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