Weiss EubanksDespite working in an industry where sexual harassment is rampant, Kelly Clarkson says she’s “blessed” to have avoided it personally. But she’s encouraging women to speak out against it, and ask themselves if accepting such behavior as a trade-off for success is really worth it in the end.
Speaking to USA Today, Kelly says, “Unfortunately, I think a lot of people think, ‘Well, I have to keep working with this person or I won’t be able to have a career.’ But…do you want a career like that?”
“I would give all of this away if it meant I had to be around someone that made me feel the way these women have been made to feel. I would,” she insists. “There’s no way.”
“People are fearful because it’s their job. I totally get it,” she continues. “But my advice is…if you really love what you do, you need to find people around you that love and support you…and I think you just have to say, at the end of the day, ‘Is this worth me putting up with? Is that worth it?’ Because…it’s not.”
Kelly also tells USA Today, “I’m all about, ‘People should talk about it if something happened to you’…because I don’t think people are able to heal without voicing it, without having it validated that something horrible happened to them, and they suppress it.”
As for what she would do if she had been in that kind of situation, Kelly says her husband has asked her that very question.
“I’m like, ‘I don’t even know,'” she tells USA Today. “I might have just frozen. Because you’re…in shock. Because you think you’ll just run away, but you can’t, you have no idea what’s about to happen…I don’t even know.”
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