Kesha is treating pleasure as part of her comeback vocabulary, and she is not dressing it up for anyone’s comfort.
The 39-year-old American singer, who broke through in 2009 with Tik Tok, has largely kept her relationships out of the spotlight over the years. Lately, though, she has been much more direct about dating, sex and what freedom looks like after years of public and legal battles around her career.
On a recent episode of Call Her Daddy, host Alex Cooper asked Kesha about reclaiming her sexuality. Kesha called that process a “miracle”, then offered a detail Cooper did not appear to see coming: she masturbates to gratitude meditations.
When Cooper questioned whether she was being serious, Kesha replied: “Don’t knock it till you try it.”
Kesha says pleasure has become part of her reset
Kesha linked the admission to the feeling of freedom she experienced after the end of her recording contracts, saying she had been left “p***ed” about a lot of things but was now focusing on pleasure.
“It’s been amazing. Literally, when I got my freedom, I was like, I think, you know, I’m p***ed about a lot of stuff, but one of the things is that like pleasure,” she said.
“I keep coming back to pleasure. It is okay as a woman to feel pleasure in this world.
“When you go through things, pleasure is not like the number one neural pathway that your brain always goes to when you have survived things, and I had to reprogram that, and I do it every f***ing day and I’m not even embarrassed about it.”
Gratitude meditation generally involves focusing on things a person feels thankful for. It can include guided reflection, breathing exercises and visualisation. Kesha, apparently, has found a more specific use case. Wellness apps may need a new category.
The Italy clause caught fire online
Kesha also shared another detail about her current sex life, telling Cooper she is “mostly celibate”, with one notable exception.
“Do you know? Should I say this? I probably should,” she said. “I don’t care. I’m free. I’m now mostly celibate, you know, except for when you’re in Italy.”
She then clarified that she meant when she herself is in Italy.
The line quickly landed with fans online. One X user, wyd_sammy1, wrote: “Honestly, ‘celibate except for when I’m in Italy’ is the most relatable lifestyle goal I’ve ever heard.”
Another, Empires_untold, called it “the most unhinged geographical clause I’ve ever heard”, while camii_26 added: “We’ve all been there queen.”
Kesha said she is currently single, but joked that her “pu***” was manifesting “her king”. She also looked back on past dating choices, saying she had previously dated people she “had no business dating”. One ex, she said, smelled “kind of like a Subway sandwich that had been sitting in the back of your car for a couple of days”.
Kesha has been open about identity and dating
Kesha has spoken about sexuality before. In a 2019 interview with Attitude, she said: “I have always been attracted to the soul behind a person’s eyes. It has never occurred to me to care about a specific gender, or how someone is identifying, to make me wonder about whether or not I’m attracted to them.”
Three years later, she described her sexuality in broader terms: “I’m not gay. I’m not straight. I don’t know what I am. I love people…I refuse to be anything, really, except for open to it all.”
In an interview with Elle last year, Kesha also described dating in Los Angeles as “digging through the garbage”. She recalled one failed romance in which a man ended things the day after she did not take him to a party hosted by Taylor Swift. For Kesha, that confirmed he was “in it for the wrong reasons”.
She said she remains open to a relationship, but only with someone who treats her as well as she treats herself.
“I kept hearing people say, ‘I’m looking for The One’. I kept waiting for somebody else to fill that space, and then I just stepped into it myself,” she said.
“You gotta be all those things to yourself – your own boyfriend, sugar daddy, rich husband, best friend, cheerleader. I started taking myself on vacations, buying myself six dozen roses, and taking myself for shopping sprees at Saint Laurent.
“Yes, I take myself on fing really bougie dates, like really celebrating the f out of myself. I was like, God, I am The One, though.”
For Kesha, the headline-grabbing confession is really part of a larger point: after years of being defined by contracts, conflict and public scrutiny, she is now insisting on defining pleasure, romance and freedom for herself.
