It's widely known that Jewel struggled with homelessness before she found fame. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, however, she shed light some other elements of her past. Most notable among them is her claim that she has faced sexual harassment since she was 8.
"I’ve had men hitting on me, sadly, since I was really young," the singer shared. "At 8, I had men putting dimes in my hands saying, 'Call me. It’d be so great to fuck when you’re older.' And just horrible stuff."
Jewel, whose new album, Picking Up the Pieces, drops today, details her battle against the "male-dominated" music industry in her memoir, Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story, out September 15.
"I never slept my way to the top, ever," she told THR, but shared moments when, as a young singer, she would be asked for sex.
"I’ve never been more propositioned by businessmen in my life," she recalled of being a struggling singer-songwriter living out of her car. "It was almost like they were sharks that could smell blood, like of vulnerability. I’d go back to my car, writing songs, and men would literally come up and proposition me. They would be like, 'Hey, do you need rent money?' you know and things like that. It was pretty wild. I never took anybody up on it, but it was interesting to see this side of men that basically would prey on somebody vulnerable."
It sounds like a nightmare, but we're glad Jewel survived it all and is still making her voice heard.
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