Nicole Scherzinger struggled with her sexy image

Los Angeles:  Singer Nicole Scherzinger says her strong religious beliefs made her uncomfortable with her sexy image as a member of the all-girl band, The Pussycat Dolls.

She joined the band in 2003. The girl group came out with first album in 2005. Scherzinger was the lead singer of the band, which disbanded in 2010. After years of speculation, the Pussycat Dolls are reuniting for a UK tour in 2020.

“I was very conservative. I had really strong religious beliefs. I just wanted to make my mother proud,” Scherzinger told theguardian.com.

Before her audition, she got intimidated by other women who came dressed only in their underwear.

“In the beginning, it was a massive hump for me to get over,” she said while talking about her sexy image.

“If you look at my outfits, I was in trousers most of the time,” said the singer, who was born in Honolulu and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky.

She pointed out that she has never even kissed anyone in a music video, while now “people sucking each other’s faces off and dry-humping – it’s everywhere, you know?”

She added: “I think there’s something to be said for leaving a little bit for the imagination. I’m a massive fan of all the cool kids out there, I’m not going to judge them. I just know, for myself, I like to try to be a little bit more … I don’t want to say demure, I sound like a prude – classy?”

As she rose to fame with the music group, Scherzinger was fighting an inner battle and struggling with an eating disorder and body-image issues.

She recalled that she would sometimes go to the gym for five to eight hours a day and she obsessed over food.

“A lot of that stole the joy of what I was doing, because I was living in a very dark world. I was either working or tormenting myself,” she said, adding that she has always been in favour of a reunion as she “didn’t get to enjoy it before”.