Most celebrities won’t let you into their inner world. Not Janet. In the October/November issue of Giant, she opens up about her brother Michael, her weight issues, the secret baby rumors…pretty much every topic that would provoke other celebrities to issue a terse “No comment.”
On being unhappy with her appearance:
“I don’t see myself as a sexy person…. For a long time, I had a hard time finding things I liked about myself physically. I’d never look in the mirror…’cause I didn’t really like what I saw. One day I looked in the mirror because I wanted to find something that I liked about myself—and I started crying. I didn’t see anything.”
On her butt:
“I would always wear clothes that made my butt look smaller because I was so self-conscious about it.”
On where her body issues came from:
“Childhood. My brother Michael used to tease me. We’re very close, but he was very adamant about the way I looked, the way I should look. He thought my butt was too big. Maybe he wasn’t completely happy with himself, so he put it on me? I’m just guessing here, but looking back now, I know that in adolescence your body changes, and he would always tease people left and right about something. When his own body started to change…he became a lot more introverted.”
On her weight fluctuations:
“I have a very slow metabolism to begin with, not like my sister who loses [weight] very quickly and doesn’t have to lift a thing to do it.”
On thinking of Michael while recording “Love 2 Love”:
“That song was written and recorded while my brother was going through it. The whole night trying to record, I could not stop crying. Michael was in my mind… Thank God the room I was singing in didn’t have any windows…”
On how her recording career almost ended with Control:
“It was tough. I was doing Fame, and my heart wasn’t in it. Things were going horribly in my marriage, and I actually wanted to get fired, and…I never realy wanted to sing. I wanted to go to college and study business law and just be an actress and support my way through school [by doing that]. But my father always said you can make more money as a singer than as an actress.”
On her former brother-in-law spreading rumors that she had a secret daughter with James DeBarge:
“I think he wanted to get attention, and it upsets me people seem to want me to have a baby I’ve never told anyone about. But I think James’ mother believes there’s a baby as well. He and I have actually talked about it. He said to me that his mother actually mentioned it to him so much, he had to ask me about it! Like, ‘You wouldn’t do that, would you?’ And I had to tell him, ‘If I’d had a baby, you would know.’ I would never keep a child from its father.”
On starting a family with Jermaine Dupri:
“Jermaine made me feel less self-conscious about my body, my butt. I’ve never had anyone who looks at me and just loves me. He’s the only one I’ve ever even thought about having kids with. People offered to ‘help me out’ after my divorce [laughs], but now I would really love to experience motherhood.”
On her rumored blacklisting by MTV and VH1:
“If they want to come along and join the party, they can. If not, so be it.”
For more of Janet, click here to see her sexy GIANT photo gallery!
