Megan Thee Stallion now graces the latest cover of Glamour Magazine as one of its 2021 Women of the Year, and shared that her journey to owning her confidence was a finish line that took years to cross.
According to Hollywood Life, she joins actress Mariska Hargitay and poet Amanda Gorman as honorees. Now that the "WAP" rapper has taken over the Grammy Awards, the VMAs and other award shows, she showcased her excessively unapologetic mindset in her profile — though she admits she wasn't always that way.
GLAMOUR’S WOMAN OF THE YEAR @glamourmag
pic.twitter.com/loI0TeLhxX— TINA SNOW (@theestallion) November 2, 2021
“I used to be a people-pleaser because I did want everyone to be happy,” the rapper said. “If you come around me, I always try to make sure everybody good. Before I was grown, I’m doing whatever my parents say. I’m doing things that make my parents happy. At school, I’m trying to figure out what’s going to make these kids stop bullying me. But when I started getting older, I started figuring out, everything that y’all asking me to do not make me happy.”
“It seems like I can never satisfy everybody,” she continued. “So then I started being like, ‘What do I like?’ I’m an only child, so I had a lot of time to spend by myself to think about it. I’m here by myself all day; what we gon’ do, Megan? That’s how I figured out I really do enjoy writing music. I love writing stories. I started living life for me.”
The major change came for her when she started school at Prairie View A&M in 2013, where she crafted her rap persona, dropping her last name, Pete, in favor of Thee Stallion. As she started participating in freestyle competitions, she needed something from her audience — respect.
“How I come off, that’s how everybody treated me,” she said. “If I commanded my respect, I demanded my respect; if I’m showing you how confident I am, then you have no choice but to treat me that way.”
That same confidence was used as she protested on major stages to highlight Black women and Black Lives Matter. The rapper protested the ruling of Breonna Taylor's case during her SNL performance.
“In life now, I’m just walking around here doing whatever I want to, and I had to learn. It doesn’t matter how that makes other people feel because I’m not going to be with none of y’all. I’m not looking at y’all when I wake up in the morning. I’m not looking at you in the mirror. I have to do things that make me feel good from the inside out,” she said.