Source: KMazur/WireImage / Getty
Get your head and your ears out of the gutter.
Missy Elliott says the favorite Tweet song “Oops (Oh My)” was not about masturbation, as people assumed, but rather, just loving the skin you’re in. Literally.
Elliott, who co-wrote the song with Tweet, took to Twitter on Tuesday (January 5) to set the record straight for a fan (and the rest of us).
“#Funfact this song was never bout Masturbation it was always about her appreciating her Dark Skin (Self Love)when she looked in the mirror,” she said. “it was the listeners that thought it was about sex & just ran with it…& we just let the consumers mind create what they wanted.”
Perhaps it was the “I was feeling so good I had to touch myself” and the suggestive dancing in the video that gave people that idea. However, Elliott said the fans had the wrong idea.
Tweet actually said that years ago. In an interview with Bustle back in 2016, she revealed that information for the first time, saying she was inspired by a recommendation from a doctor featured on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show to look at one’s self in the mirror naked when she wrote the song. That recommendation was in the hopes of encouraging an appreciation of one’s beauty.
“People can take their definition of what any song means to them, but for me, the song wasn’t about masturbation — it was about self-love,” she said. “That’s what the song was about — getting naked and just loving what you saw.”
“It was empowering for me to write the song because I felt like I didn’t love myself,” she added. “I came from a time where my skin — being a dark-skinned woman — it wasn’t really ‘in’. I would always be teased for my skin color. I would always be called different names for my skin color, so I was empowering myself in writing the song.”
The confusion about the song’s meaning, according to Tweet, brought upon a stark contrast in reactions to it.
“I have gotten every type of response you can imagine,” she told the publication. “A lot of women have said that I helped them become comfortable with their bodies. And then negatively, [some] people have said ‘how could you even sing something like that?!'”
The more you know.
