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Alexa Ray Joel (Getty Images)
Alexa Ray Joel says in a candid new interview that she was bullied over her looks while growing up in the shadow of supermodel mom Christie Brinkley and rocker dad Billy Joel, and admits that she did have plastic surgery.
“The media was a little rough on me,” the singer tells Social Life Magazine. “They used to pick on my looks, and I used to care too much about how they perceived me.”
Joel says that growing up on fancy Further Lane in the Hamptons, “I was painfully shy . . . I was terrified of going to events with [my parents] and getting my picture taken.”
But when she did come out of her shell as a teenager, she said her looks were unfairly scrutinized. “I’d throw on any dress,” she recalls. “And I was given a hard time for it.” She says gossip blogger “Perez Hilton labeled me a slut. I was 19 when he called me that, and it was hard . . . I know what it feels like to be bullied and to be bullied by the media on a very large scale.” As a result, “I didn’t perform my own music for a while.”
Alexa Ray got into a war of words with Hilton in 2007 after he posted an unflattering picture with the caption, “It must suck when your mom’s a supermodel.”
Now 27, the self-described “Long Island girl” mentions her “public breakup” with a boyfriend that led to her hospitalization, and says of being picked on: “My father always said at the end of his shows, ‘Don’t take any [bleep] from anybody.’ I believe in expressing yourself and standing up for your beliefs.”
Joel adds, “I used to care too much what other people thought of me . . . now is a time when I’m starting over. It’s a rebirth. I no longer feel like I’m hiding in the shadows of my parents.”
The singer denies reports that her “rebirth” included extensive surgery. “I want to make it clear that this makeover is not a transformation out of plastic,” she says. “I am genuinely a late bloomer.” But she admits, “I did have my nose done, but that’s all, and that was a while ago.
“My beauty is very different from my mother’s. My music is very different from my father’s . . . I would just like people to have an open mind.”