14 DAY TRIAL // Mariah Carey is, for many, not just a singer who can say she stood the test of time, but also a very strong woman, a woman who overcame obstacles others would have probably crumbled under. Mariah is also an icon of our generation but, at the same time, a woman like all others out there in that she’s a happily married wife who, once she gets home, is no longer a star.
Speaking with Paper Magazine for the December / January issue, Mariah Carey reveals some of the anguish caused by the media backlash as she suffered her much mediated breakdown in 2001. Her career had reached a standstill and her personal life was a mess, and Mariah fell apart like any other person in her situation would have done, the only difference being that she, unlike anybody else, had to pick herself up under the glaring eye of the public opinion.
It wasn’t right what happened to her, she says for the mag. “It was after September 11th. A lot of people taking shots at me had no place to go. We are friggin’ ADD, this country. There’s a huge ADD situation,” Carey says of how people suddenly lost perspective and became intensely preoccupied about her own life instead of minding their own problems. As fans will know, it wasn’t until she took some time off and went into “hiding” for a while that the media scrutiny started to die down.
However, Mariah’s always been like a little girl with self-esteem issues, she says, which is perhaps why she took the way people treated her so to heart. “I have had very low self-esteem my whole life.” the singer reveals, going on with details of one particular occurrence that comes to her mind. “When I was 12 or 13, I remember walking up the driveway, and this guy who was 20 – which may have been highly inappropriate – said to me, ‘I like your pants,’ and I was like ‘Oh, that looks good? Oh, OK, I will wear tight pants now’,” Mariah adds.
Regardless of all this, she is now happily married and is finally getting the bliss she’s always been dreaming of. Mariah Carey describes life with Nick Cannon as being eternally 16, an age when things are painted in bright colors and one’s main concern is what to do next to have fun.