Singer Maisie Peters says there is 'a confidence' that comes with her blond hair: 'Maybe I have more fun'
It Figures is Yahoo Life's body image series, delving into the journeys of influential and inspiring figures as they explore what body confidence, body neutrality and self-love mean to them.
To watch pop singer-songwriter Maisie Peters on stage, you may assume she’s never felt less than confident in her life.
Yet the 22-year-old English performer — who recently opened for Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour — knows what it’s like to feel insecure in her own skin. More than that, she’s not afraid to own it: The lead single off her sophomore album The Good Witch — which dropped in June 2023 and has since topped the UK charts — is a track called "Body Better." In the song, Peters wonders if her ex’s new girlfriend has a "body better than mine" — because otherwise, what would be the reason for their split?
"It was relevant to how I was feeling about writing the album, and writing the song," she tells Yahoo Life. "I had the chorus written down in my notes for a while. It wasn’t something that was hard to write … I was around people I really loved, who I had talked to about the situation many times. It felt like something I wanted to say and get down on paper."
In an essay for Glamour UK, Peters called the new girlfriend of her ex a "bat that I could use to beat myself with," as she is not the target of the singer's rage as much as Peters’s own insecurities are.
But while Peters isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, she’s also not afraid to be unabashedly confident. Take her song "Blonde," a single she released in between her 2021 album You Signed Up for This and The Good Witch, in which she sings, "I'm going Gwen Stefani, I'm going Courtney Love/ I'm heading out of your league/I'm gonna make your friends say, 'Man you messed that up'/And I would have to agree." The song came out around the time Peters, a natural brunette, dyed her hair platinum.
"It just happened to come at a time when my life changed," Peters says about the hair color. "When I went blond it was a very different time in my life, in terms of what I was doing and who I was becoming. I do like being a blonde. There is a confidence that comes with it. Maybe I have more fun — I guess we’ll see. Having said that, in recent times, I do miss being a brunette. My hair has a straw consistency, and I do miss the days where it was a little bit softer. You may find me going back to my natural color at some point."
Peters is also aware of the "female demand for reinvention of style," that isn’t necessarily always a personal preference.
"I always try to reuse and rewear things. It’s realistic, and it’s the most sustainable, and it’s the example I want to lead," she says. "I have a lot of fans who aren’t going to buy a new outfit for every show they see me at, so I’m not going to wear a new outfit either."
