Alizee did an interview in 2014 on Stars Au Grand Air, and I think it reveals a lot. In it, she said:
When I was young, I didn't feel comfortable in my skin at all.
I had an unusual name.
There weren't too many Alizées.
People made fun of me.
I had glasses. I wasn't a beauty.
I didn't have many friends.
I was very shy. Very withdrawn.
It was difficult for me to ... interact... with others... and when I tried to, they pushed me aside and made fun of me.
So when I went to my dance courses it was a liberation.
I forgot all the bad things.
I took off my glasses and I could dance for hours.
I am not somebody who adores herself.
When I look in the mirror I am not in ecstasy.
When I sing on TV, I never look at myself.
I don't know why.
Everybody has their complexes and their problems.
I had not seen this until just a few days ago. I had long suspected that Alizee had some body image issues and was self-critical (along with being generally insecure), and I had posted it in the past.
I can completely relate to her based on my life experience. I too was painfully shy as a child and a complete nerd. Glasses as well. I would choose to borrow books from the library that contained chess matches between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spasky and recreate the moves on my chess board instead of hanging with the cool kids. The only reason I did not get bullied or made fun of was because I was big.. and strong.
When I started liking girls to the point where I wanted to do something about, I was about 15 (this was in 1976). I asked my parents to get me contact lenses (they did), I got my hair styled with something modern (you know, parted in the middle and feathered
) Wanting to be accepted in a social circle other than the nerds, I made a radical shift and started hanging out with the "heads", and was accepted. For those younger than 50-ish, this would be the group who thought they were still 1960's hippies. Long hair, sloppy clothes (mainly blue jeans), hard rock listeners, pot smoking... you get the picture. I had a blast and had luck with the girls left and right, but my parents had a heart attack and thought I was going to end up in some gutter.
The point is, I went through this identity crisis and found some belonging, even though it wasn't really who I was. I did recognize my foolishness and move back toward my true nature, get a degree in computer science, and never looked back.
All that to say this: Alizee does not look at her body like everybody else. We see perfection (at least as it was before the tattoos). She saw, and I am coming right out and say it, ugly. We had a fit when she continued to put tattoos on her body and ruin her beautiful skin; she had none of these concerns because she didn't see her body the same way.
The whole act of tattooing herself might just be her conforming to pop culture. She had a childhood of feeling excluded and left out, so the act of getting tattoos would be an attempt to becoming included and hip and find some belonging. But the nature that we are born with is almost impossible to change, and you can see that by the nerdish tattoos that she chose and where she chose to put them.
This gives me much more appreciation for Alizee the person. It takes away some of the mystery as to why she is such a mystery.
What do you all think? Should I give up my armchair psychoanalysis, or are they valid points?