NEW YORK, July 5 (UPI) -- Azealia Banks has defended her use of skin lightening products comparing it to getting a nose job and describing it as a "woman's right."
"Its a deeper conversation into a woman's right to choose, a woman's choice," the outspoken rapper said during a Facebook Live video entitled "Skin lightening" where she addressed her decision to bleach her skin.
"With being a black woman, at least for me, I can forget to be a woman and I just get really bent up on blackness and all of these unwritten rules that come with being black. You kind of forget to give yourself a break sometimes [...] blackness in today's age is so paradoxical, it's so many different things."
"What's the difference between getting a nose job and changing your skin color? What's the difference between wearing a hair weave and changing your skin color?" she continued in the clip, filmed while the 25-year-old was on a bike ride.
"Nobody was upset when I was wearing 30-inch weaves and tearing out my edges and doing all that type of shit like that. You guys loved it."
Banks, who is known for advocating for better representation of black women in the media, also commented on how bleaching her skin does not dismiss her messages of empowerment.
"For so many people to say 'Oh you wanting to lighten your skin' ...to say it negates anything I've said about the current situation of blackness in America is ignorant and just stupid." she said. "What do body modifications have to do with somebody's level of intellect? The two don't correlate [...] and I think it's petty, I think it's very contradictory."
Banks last made headlines in May after Twitter shut down her account on the social media site following a rant against singer Zayn Malik in which she insulted Malik's Pakistani background after she claimed the former One Direction singer copied her style.
