‘Pushed To Believe My Best Asset Is My Body’: Eves Karydas Condemns Music Industry

Eves Karydas is moving to self-manage her career, she revealed over the weekend.

The Lemonade singer took to Instagram with a post entitled, "On social media, the music industry, and my experience as a woman within it all." 

The essay decries how women in music are pushed to post "thirst traps" and forever be "the hot girl" online. "I'm writing this to mark an occasion. I've reached a point where I can no longer do things the way I was doing them as it was unsustainable for my creativity and at the same time damaging my sense of self-worth," she began.

Karydas discusses the strife of her misalignment of values and beliefs. Aside from the pressures to outwardly and constantly sexualise herself on social media, she has "obsessively checked likes, read comments, puked at the gross misogyny it incites but also secretly craved the attention. And for what? All because I was told that was how to get ahead in this industry?"

Worse still, she has suppressed the authentic version of herself to find success. "I've silenced myself because I've been pushed to believe that my best asset is my body," she wrote, "nothing gets the algorithm going like ass and tits." 

As an artist who has been in the music industry for nearly a decade, it's easy to forget that Karydas, now 28 years old, started so young. She's using her platform to inform upcoming artists: "This is an industry that feeds off impressionable young people, pushing popularity propaganda, using social media stats as goal posts. And from my experience, where there is social media clout, sexual harassment is also lurking behind the curtains." 

Social media was all-encompassing for Karydas, but last September, she released her latest EP, Reruns. "I used to dedicate hours every week taking pictures for Instagram; taking hundreds of photos for each post in an attempt to, as advised, 'be someone all the girls want to be and all the guys want to fuck!'. I spent more hours doing this than I spent writing music," she wrote. "When did the music industry become about this? Historically the musicians and artists have been elusive rebels constantly in defiance of 'the man'. Surely today 'the man' is social media?

"If my contribution to society is shameless vanity then I am embarrassed. If finding success means killing my soul for some likes and comments, then I don't want it." Karydas ended her essay by announcing that she will take total control of her career. "In an effort to not only salvage my creativity but to also survive, I'm moving forward in my career self-managed."