Dua Lipa graces the February cover of 'Rolling Stone'

2020 was Dua Lipa’s year. Choosing to release her album, “Future Nostalgia,” when the COVID-19 global pandemic first brought the world to a standstill (when other musicians chose to delay their album releases) made many lonely, quarantined people dance about their self-isolated living rooms to banger pop tunes like “Don’t Start Now,” and “Levitating.”  The result of her hard-earned efforts was six Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, Pop Vocal Performance, and Record of the Year.

Now, she’s gracing the February cover of Rolling Stone magazine, and her in-depth interview to accompany it reveals a lot of how she views her rise to success, and how uplifting other women is a major part of her philosophy.

“I just feel like, if you’re a feminist, you have to also support women in all fields of work,” the British songstress says in the cover story. “We have to support sex workers, we have to believe that that [work] is their choice and their right.” “It seems quite hypocritical, I think,” she continues, “people picking and choosing as to how they want to support women and when it suits them. That’s another form of misogyny, which really derives from the male gaze.” Any celeb that acknowledges the destructive effects of misogyny and the male gaze whilst supporting women and intersectional feminist ideas gets a huge HECK YEAH from us.

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The cover story highlights all the ways she showed up for women in the past year – from her jaw-dropping female-empowerment anthems like, “IDGAF,” and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” – to publicly clapping back at Grammy President Neil Portnow’s 2018 comments that if women recording artists want more nominations, they need to “step up.” When she accepted her 2019 Grammy for Best New Artist, she quipped, “I guess this year we really stepped up.” BOOM.

Dua, who is dating Anwar Hadid (brother to models Bella and Gigi), totally slays the photoshoot for the issue. Photographed by iconic photographer David LaChapelle, she appears on the cover in a barely-there mesh outfit. Inside, we see her portrait bathed in a rainbow of lights, and she also strikes a few physically-demanding poses that require incredible flexibility.

"I'm extremely hardworking and driven,” she says about her rise to stardom this past year, pushing back against the idea that she had an advantage because of her beauty. “And I feel like that's the reason why I got to where I am, through my hard work and my drive, and I just wanted to make that clear because it has been playing on my mind.”

Her hard work in 2020 saw her pulling double duty as a working singer and also guest-host; like when she filled in for Jimmy Kimmel last summer when he took a break from Jimmy Kimmel Live! Or when she reworked her summer tunes “New Rules” and “Don’t Start Now” as quarantine dating anthems. She also gave a modern spin on a favourite Christmas classic, and then wowed our socks off when she sported Valentino couture for her musical guest spot on Saturday Night Live.

Check out her full interview, which also includes other anecdotes about her stint in modelling, and her journey to a record contract, in the February issue of Rolling Stone.

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