Alicia Keys expertly shut down Adam Levine when he questioned her no-makeup stance

That will be the last time he calls her out

Alicia Keys performing in Times Square (Getty)

Last year, Alicia Keys made waves by going make-up free.

She performed at sold-out shows, appeared in magazine photoshoots and on live TV wearing minimal to no make-up, something which is undisputedly a bold stance for a woman on a very public platform where women are intensely scrutinised over their appearance.

Explaining her decision, Keys said she was tired of the “constant judgement of women” and stressed how her decision was a personal one and unique to her own experiences and development. She did not condemn make-up as a whole or absolutely state that she would never so much as pick up a tube of mascara ever again.

So when her The Voice colleague Maroon 5’s Adam Levine decided to inspect her face and call her out when he noticed her applying some make-up, he felt the wrath of Keys.

“I joked around with her… she was putting on a little bit of make-up and I go, ‘Oh I thought Alicia doesn’t wear make-up,” he told The Howard Stern Show.

“And she’s like: ‘I do what the f*** I want.’ And I’m like, ‘I love you so much.’”

Keys previously clarified her stance after receiving criticism when she walked the red carpet of the MTV VMAs make-up free. Some just sent misogynistic comments her way while others decided to pit her against other women who do chose to wear make-up, missing Keys’ entire point that it is a woman’s choice what she does with her appearance.

“Y’all, me choosing to be make-up free doesn’t mean I’m anti-makeup. Do you!,” she wrote on Twitter. Her husband the producer Swizz Beatz also defended his wife on Instagram asking why people were “mad” at Keys given that her decision only affects her face and no one elses.

In June, Keys wrote an essay for Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner’s feminist newsletter Lenny explaining her decision to ditch the cosmetics. Describing the pressures she always felt to wear make-up and her fears that someone would see her on a day she decided not to, she finally went barefaced for a photo shoot where she felt “the strongest, most empowered, most free and most honestly beautiful I have ever felt”.

“I felt powerful because my initial intentions realised themselves. My desire to listen to myself, to tear down the walls I built over all those years, to be full of purpose and to be myself!” she wrote. “The universe was listening to those things I’d promised myself, or maybe I was just finally listening to the universe, but however it goes, that’s how this whole #nomakeup think began.”