“I would literally bang my head up against the wall because I didn’t feel attractive.” Janet Jackson, 44, told Meredith. “There was a lot of pain in my life. I felt very unattractive. There was this picture of my sister, Rebbie. And I would always look at her picture and I thought: ‘Oh Gosh, she’s so beautiful. If I could only look like that when I get older. God, how gorgeous is she?’ And I never ever felt attractive.”
The singer used to be taunted by her brothers and was called “horse, pig, cow, and slaughter-hog” by her own brothers – including the late legend Michael. Jackson is turning the childhood troubles into a positive experience in her new book True You: A Journey to Find and Loving Yourself, set to hit book stores on Feb 15.
“I guess some people could say: ‘Oh, that’s, you know, brothers and sisters joking. It’s all affection. It’s all, you know, it’s in a loving way.’ But not everybody can brush it off, and I was one of those. I still have issues with it. I don’t bang my head up against the wall but I still have those moments. And I think it’ll probably continue but at least I know how to deal with it now.”
Of her brother, whom she last saw about six weeks before he died in 2009, Jackson said she embarked on the grieving process long after everyone else in the family.
“I don’t know if it was trying to shield the pain, or just trying to hold it all together because I saw that everyone else around me was falling apart. And, never — never taking that moment to really grieve. Really grieve, even at the service [in July 2009].”
But she recently allowed herself to watch his videos and listen to his music during a nightlong session in Paris.
“And, there was moments when I– I felt the cry, and moments that made me laugh. And, it was good for me. I needed it,” she said.
latimes.com picture courtesy of crunktastical.net