Although Katy Perry might be a sex-positive and sugar-loving pop star these days, this wasn’t always the case.
After watching her shoot whipped cream from her bra in the music video for ‘California Gurls’, a lot of fans presumed she was a sweet treat enthusiast who wasn’t shy about showing her skin.
But these two things were actually strictly off limits for the Santa Barbara-born singer, 40, in her early years.
Perry previously revealed that she had quite the sheltered childhood thanks to her extremely religious parents, who enforced a lot of strict rules.
So, can you really blame her for baring all in a lilac wig and ejecting cream from canisters mounted on her bra alongside Snoop Dogg in the 2010 video?
If you ask me, it seems like she was making up for lost time.
The ‘Firework‘ hitmaker – real name Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson – revealed that she wanted to ‘liberate’ herself from the shackles of her home life by inventing her alter ego, Katy Perry.
During a candid chat with The Guardian back in 2017, The Smurfs star opened up about some of the difficulties she faced while growing up with her sister Angela and brother David.
Perry was raised by devout Christian parents, Maurice Keith Hudson and Mary Christine Perry, both of whom worked as pentecostal pastors for more than four decades.
Dubbing herself the ‘black sheep’ of the brood, the musician said: “A lot of people are living in fear from something that happened in their childhood, or some form of PTSD they picked up along the way.
“And I created this wonderful character called Katy Perry that I very much am, and can step into all the time, but I created that character out of protection,” the star said.
“It was me going, ‘OK, I’ve been upset my whole childhood so I’m going to show the world I am something, that I am going to do something and that I am enough’.
“I didn’t want to be Katheryn Hudson. I hated that, it was too scary for me, so I decided to be someone else.”
According to Perry, every aspect of the early years of her life was dictated by religion – down to the contents of the cupboards in the family home and what words came out of her mouth.
“I wasn’t able to say I was lucky, because my mother would rather us say that we were blessed, and she also didn’t like that lucky sounded like Lucifer,” she told Rolling Stone in 2010.
“Deviled eggs were called ‘angeled’ eggs,” Perry added.
As well as censoring the names of some items, the pop star’s parents supposedly outright banned a popular cereal due to their disapproval of the term ‘lucky’ – and its high sugar count.
“I wasn’t allowed to eat Lucky Charms, but I think that was the sugar,” Perry continued. “I think my mom lied to me about that one.”
The mum-of-one, who shares daughter Daisy Dove with fiancé Orlando Bloom, revealed that she also protested outside of Marilyn Manson and Madonna concerts with her mum and dad as a kid.
She handed out pamphlets titled ‘How to Find God’ – before she later joined revellers in the audience alongside her youth pastor.
Perry – who said that secular music was banned in her family home – said she found the shows were a ‘really interesting and weird‘ experience.
But she really found her sound when she got introduced to the legendary Brit rock band, Queen, when she was 15 years old.
“That was my first perspective on that world, and I just loved it,” she said. “I felt so free and accepted.”
Perry explained she is respectful of her parents’ beliefs, even if she doesn’t agree with them all.
“I come from a very non-accepting family, but I’m very accepting,” she told Vanity Fair in 2011. “We coexist.
“I don’t try to change them anymore, and I don’t think they try to change me. We agree to disagree.”
