While the world obsessed over Pink's VMAs speech, her daughter felt very differently.

Pink’s empowering message of self-acceptance was met with fist-pumping at the MTV Video Music Awards and around the world, but there was one person who probably wasn’t that roused: her daughter.

You see the subject of Pink’s kick-arse speech had other things on her mind that night, the singer told Ellen DeGeneres during an appearance on her show this week.

The mum-of-two told the host that Willow, six, had a sleepover planned for that night – and that was really all she was concerned with, much to the dismay of her superstar mum.

“My daughter was incredibly unimpressed by me,” Pink told DeGeneres.

“I was like, ‘Babe, are you excited about today? I’m going to win an award and I’m going to do a show.’ And she goes, ‘Exactly how many minutes after you sing does my sleepover start?’

“I was like, ‘Dude, can you pretend to be excited for me?'”

Pink went on to share more details of the moment that had inspired her speech, made while accepting the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award from DeGeneres herself.

The 37-year-old was driving her daughter to school when Willow told her she was the ugliest girl she knows.

“I was so speechless and I didn’t want to mom her and start preaching to her and not be effective at all, so I just stayed quiet,” she said.

Gallery: Pink and her family. Post continues… 

“And I said, ‘Why do you think that? Did someone say that to you? What’s happening?’ And she’s like, ‘I just look like a boy with long hair.’ I just didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. And I went home, I cried, and I made this Word document.”

The document, which Pink’s husband had pointed out was not a PowerPoint presentation, was made up of photos of musicians who had inspired her and others, but didn’t fit society’s narrow standards of beauty, and in it she included herself.

She told Ellen she knew she couldn’t shield her daughter from having “mean things” said to her, but she wanted to make her more resilient, so she could carry on anyway.

Listen: Holly Wainwright and Andrew Daddo discuss the politics of parenting girls.

READ MORE:

• Pink’s VMAs speech joins a long list of the many times she’s been awe-inspiring to women everywhere.
• Pink gets real about her post-body weight, exposing the problem with BMI standards.
• The most important thing Andrew Daddo has discovered from 18 years of parenting.