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In a recent interview, Keke Palmer opened up about the complications of growing up as a child star. According to the well-admired multi-hyphenate, the formative experience taught her a lot about herself in hindsight and shaped who she is now as an adult.
While speaking on InStyle’s Ladies First with Laura Brown, 27-year-old Palmer shared that growing up in the entertainment industry as a child performer could be challenging because her emotions weren’t often prioritized. As she discussed how being in that environment could encourage people-pleasing behaviors, she also mentioned that when child stars aren’t catering to the demands of the industry, they’re often portrayed as being hard to work with.
“At a young age in the child entertainer world,” Palmer explained, “your emotions are always the last thing that people care about. I think you get really quickly into being a people-pleaser and trying to be everything that everybody wants you to be. And so I think in a lot of that, you end up being misunderstood. When you’re not always being agreeable, you’re a brat.”
“It’s always been a bit of a thing for me because people have had all these expectations of who they want me to be at a very young age,” she said. “How they want me to act and how they want me to respond. I’ve fought a lot of that most of my adult life, and I’m still new into my adult life.”
Relatedly, Palmer also talked a lot about her journey towards finding self-acceptance — particularly when it came to her PCOS journey. Speaking on how she became less and less worried about covering up her skin and hormonal breakouts, she explained, “As I got older I think I really just got tired. It was tiring to me to keep on hiding my skin and doing that whole thing. I didn’t know anything about PCOS, anything about my hormones, or the condition of my hormones. I couldn’t deal with the burden of trying to hide it.”
“That’s why I really don’t have that many secrets,” she said inspiringly. “I mean I have privacy and I have boundaries but I don’t really have secrets and stuff like that. I just really feel like if I love and accept myself — that’s just the easiest route for life. If all I have to do is love myself, be myself, be true to myself, and keep it real with people — if that’s the hardest thing I have to do I’d rather do that than have to lie, cheat, and steal all to cover up these things when it’s not even really a big deal.”
To hear the full interview and more of what Palmer had to say on gaining self-acceptance in her own words, click here.
