Leigh-Anne Pinnock says being in Little Mix 'chipped away' at her confidence
Leigh-Anne Pinnock got candid about her time in chart-climbing girl group Little Mix, explaining her confidence was sadly "chipped away" over time.
The mum-of-two was propelled into the spotlight after auditioning for The X Factor all the way back in 2011, aged just 19 at the time. She then joined forces with Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall, and Jesy Nelson to form Little Mix.
It was at the height of the Shout Out To My Ex band's fame that Leigh-Anne admits struggling with her identity within the group. Appearing on Capital Breakfast with Will Manning, she admits feeling she was "losing parts of me".
Leigh-Anne admits struggles while in Little Mix (WireImage)
She appeared alongside Will Manning on Capital (Capital FM)"That was a struggle. I think finding my identity in the group, I think every girl had their thing. Jade was like the cute Geordie, Perrie was this beautiful blonde and incredible voice, Jesy was inspirational, and I was like where do I fit in this?
"And yeah I went through, do I have a certain hairstyle that I always rock? Or am I wearing the sexy dresses? I'm really struggling to find this place and I really did find myself just losing parts of me, I went into that group so confident and confident with my voice, confident with my everything, and right from the beginning these things were just chipped away, chipped away."
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She told Will: "When you think of Little Mix, you think of those times, you think of colour and rainbows and happiness, and yes a lot of it was, because I was with my sisters and we had the time of our lives, and I think the reason why I kind of got on with it was I had them to just laugh with.
"I felt like I really needed that, that sisterhood meant everything to me. I think what was hard as well was not really understanding what was going on. If you think that the reason why I felt like this was because of the colour of my skin, I couldn’t even say those words because it didn’t really make sense to me."
Leigh-Anne has been vocal in the past, previously saying she felt like the "token Black girl". She explained: "I'm still struggling to talk about it in general. So the fact that it comes down to the token black girl - you do see it in other girl bands. It's like a... not a trend, but it's happened so often. It really does make me think, 'If I was shades darker, would I be sat here right now?' I don't know."
She has spoken out before about the racism she experienced while in Little Mix, as part of her BBC documentary Leigh-Anne: Race, Pop & Power, which aired in 2021. In her book, Believe, Pinnok says she felt X Factor producers "didn't know how to" portray her and looked to the likes of Rihanna to define her identity as a Black artist.
She wrote in her memoir: "Rather than encourage me to be myself or give me the space for my own personality to shine through, instead they tried to simply copy and paste an identity from somewhere else. Notably, Rihanna.
"During the makeover stage on The X Factor, the producers gave me her iconic red hairstyle – from her Loud era – an exact match, shade for shade. And they shaved one side of my head." She gut-wrenchingly recalls: "I remember the sickening buzz of the clippers, my curls dropping to the floor around my feet. I stared at this girl in the mirror, a face I barely recognised. Who was she? What did other people see when they looked at me? Did they even see me at all?"
Leigh-Anne added how she felt her authentic personality was never seen by fans, adding: "For some reason, this real version of myself, the happy, vibrant, fun-loving me, wasn't what anyone was seeing. I wasn't playing a role, or trying to be anything I'm not, but it just wasn't connecting with people and I wasn't able to let this side of me shine."
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