Lily Allen wants to be as transparent as she can be about all facets of her life, and that includes destigmatizing aspects of sexuality that are often shamed.
On a recent episode of her podcast Miss Me?, which she co-hosts with Miquita Oliver, the "Smile" singer opened up about all things kink.
Responding to a listener question about kink-shaming, she said, "I wonder if I kink-shame my husband. He quite often asks for things, and I'm like, 'No, babe. It's not happening.'"
When Oliver lightly ribbed Allen for engaging in kink-shaming, she clarified, "I'm not going like, 'You piece of s**t! How dare you ask me to do that?' I'm just like, 'Hmm, headache! Little headache, got a little bit of a headache. Maybe not tonight.'"
Still, Allen stressed that she believes strongly in "normalizing everything that people are ashamed about in themselves."
She then gave the example of what she called a "very promiscuous" phase in her life, when she had sex with female sex workers following the breakdown of her marriage to ex Sam Cooper.
This isn't the first time Allen has made the revelation, having previously spoken about it in her memoir My Thoughts Exactly.
Explaining why she chose to reveal this intimate detail about herself so publicly, she said that she wanted to get ahead of the tabloids with it. "I thought to take a little bit of the power back, I would reveal it myself in my book," she said.
The other reason Allen chose to talk about it was "because lots of other people have done the same thing, and I think that when they hear someone like me talk about their own experiences in a non-shameful, matter-of-fact way, then it makes people feel better about themselves."
She continued, "So I'm always wanting to do that. I want to do that with my music... To me that's what art is, that's what creativity is, is helping people come to terms with their own behavior, and behavior that society looks down on, but we're all just human, right?"
Allen has been married to husband David Harbour since 2020.
