Iggy Azalea says her body was 'commodified' by record labels, music executives: 'I got the smallest cut'
Iggy Azalea is doing just fine.
The "Fancy" rapper, 32, held nothing back in a recent conversation with Emily Ratajkowski on her podcast, High Low with EmRata, during which she opened up about motherhood, plastic surgery and starting an account on OnlyFans.
Azalea joined OnlyFans in January, telling Ratajkowski she's made "so much money" since debuting her new art project, "Hotter Than Hell," on the platform. For her, the success is a reminder of what happens when women are empowered to commodify their own bodies.
"I made record labels so much money off my body. I made a lot of people so much money off my body. And I got the smallest cut off my own f***ing body and my own work and my own ideas," she said of her early years. "I don't think I have to say sorry about the fact that I want to commodify my own s***. It's been commodified and I wasn't even the main f***ing benefactor of it, so f*** this. And I enjoy it. I'm going to do it anyway."
Azalea contemplated the decision to join OnlyFans for several months before going through with it. And while "there's boobs and there's butt and I am naked," she said the platform is just another avenue for her to express herself as an artist.
"I wanted to do certain things in this project that I felt like, how will they see it when everything is so censored on every platform? It makes sense that it would go here," she explained. "Everything that I felt in terms of my nervousness about it or my hesitancy, within two days of doing it, it went out the window. I was like, 'I’m so f***ing glad that I did this.'"
"I made a lot of people so much money off my body. I don’t think I have to say sorry about the fact that I want to commodify my own s***," Azalea said. "Having the confidence to tell people 'no' and not feel bad about it does wonders for you," noting that when she was younger, "it was hard for me to advocate for myself a lot of the times. I don’t feel like I have a problem advocating for myself anymore."
The mom, who shares 3-year-old son Onyx with ex Playboi Carti, also opened up about the joys of parenting and how her life has changed since giving birth.
"I think I'm a much better person now that I have a child because it gave me so much more patience," she explained. "Also, in a way, [it] forced me to really evaluate what I'm doing and my intention in everything that I do.
"I just want to make sure that I make a human that's good," she said of raising her son. "There are so many things that goes into that, so that’s why I say I'm always much more intentional with everything I do now because of having a son. I want him to see what I'm doing and be, in a way, proud of me."
That was a lesson she received herself as a child, having been raised by a mom who encouraged her dreams of becoming a rapper and, later, supported her decision to have plastic surgery — after having gone through it herself.
"I come from a very body-positive, sex-positive group of women that raised me, and I remember [picking up] my mom from her breast augmentation and she was really f***ing happy about it. I was happy for her and I didn't see anything wrong with it," she said. "My takeaway from her doing that was she finally felt she could do something for herself now that she didn't have to answer to somebody else."
Azalea went on to say "it's funny you have to be unapologetic for what you want for your own body. The irony."
"I haven't had plastic surgery in a long time. I changed what I wanted to change. I'm really happy with the changes," she said "They went really well. I'm really glad that I did that. I feel really good about them."
Ultimately, she doesn't "feel ashamed" about her breast implants.
"I don't want other women to feel that they constantly have to hide about what they want to f***ing do, too," Azalea said.
Wellness, parenting, body image and more: Get to know the who behind the hoo with Yahoo Life's newsletter. Sign up here.
