When women sing along to Jessie J's new song, Queen, they'll be singing: "I love my body, I love my skin, I am a goddess, I am a queen." And that's no accident. Originally, Queen's lyrics were slightly different, Jessie J tells Refinery29. At first, the words were, "Just love your body, just love your skin." But Jessie J wanted women to sing to themselves. She wanted her song to be an anthem for all women, but especially women who rarely get to see their kind of beauty celebrated.
"It's about making women feel empowered and strong and loved and beautiful in any which way they want to look and feel," she says. She hopes that when they're singing these words to themselves, women will remember that they're not just lyrics.
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That dream has become a reality. Since the song came out, women have been pulling Jessie J aside and telling her that they'd never spoken those words to themselves until they sang along to Queen. With the drop of the music video Friday morning, women can now not only tell themselves that they're beautiful, but they can see all kinds of women — plus size women, women with Down syndrome, women with vitiligo, older women, Muslim women, and many more — celebrate their beauty unashamed.
Helping women celebrate their beauty was a huge part of the reason Jessie J made this video, which she edited herself. She had a hand in casting each woman in the video, and wanted to make sure every woman could watch it and feel represented in some way.
While you might only recognize a few of the women in this video, like motivational speaker and anti-bullying activist Lizzie Valaquez, each of these women is extraordinary, Jessie J says. "Christine, the young woman with Down Syndrome is a huge fan of me and she stayed until the very end of the videos. She was the last person to leave, and she was literally my rock during the last few scenes," she says. Christine and almost all of the other women in the video have messaged Jessie J since it was shot in December to tell her that the video made them feel beautiful, strong, proud, and understood.
And Jessie J only hopes that watching the video will make women feel as beautiful as being in the video made Christine and the other women feel. "All women are perfect, however they're shaped," she says. "We're all incredible, strong human beings."