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I can’t help myself. I just am fascinated by other female artists, probably because I feel a kinship with them, no matter who they are and what they do. And I’m 45 now. I’m not a kid. I feel like I’m a grown-up, and I know exactly what they’re going through. I have lived it myself. It’s a minefield to navigate. People seem to think this is really simple. It’s really difficult to navigate attention and stardom and celebrity status, and still try to maintain yourself and hold onto your intelligence and integrity. It’s really challenging. I watch these young women try to navigate our culture, and I watch them struggle, or I watch the unbelievable hostility they have to bear. So I guess, yeah, I feel protective.

It’s a political thing for me, too; I feel women have to have other women’s backs. They still do. Until we command the exact same salary as every male counterpart, I feel a political desire to stand by other women. If we don’t stand together, that equality will never be fully realized, and that bothers me. I see very little in our culture, actually, of women necessarily standing up for one another. I think there’s still an underlying fear if one woman has the light shone upon her, it takes away from your light, which of course is not the case at all. But I think when you’re young, you maybe fear that.