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I learned there were “safe” hair color groups: Maroon burgundy was a daring color, but anything veering closer to fiery red was dismissed as “ghetto” or “loud” by older women in my orbit. The salon was a microcosm of Black womanhood, a place to try on looks society (and our mothers) had steered us away from.
#MARY J BLIGE MY LIFE ALBUM COVER FRONT CODE#
Blige was the disrupter.Īs a Black teenager growing up in the Bronx-not far from Blige’s home zip code in Yonkers-I came of age in the kind of salon we’re shooting photos in. Blige’s platinum blonde was the middle finger to old-fashioned hair stereotypes set in place to push Black women away from the center of beauty conversations. Society has always tried to police Black women on which hairstyles are deemed acceptable or which lipstick shades are flattering. Blige developed a knack for experimenting with different hair colors and styles, from blondes to reds. “I used peroxide to lift my hair color all the way up to platinum ,” she remembers fondly. And nobody in her circle had been bold enough to try blonde hair-yet.īut in high school, with some help from Salt-N-Pepa, Blige found the look that would become her hallmark. Nobody was trying to duplicate anybody,” she says. Nobody wanted to look like the next person. “That’s what was cool about the hood-everybody had an identity. Identity meant everything to young Blige. Every little Black girl wanted wavy hair.” For a while, she resorted to perms, weaves, and dyes to give her hair the dimension she felt it was lacking. “Because of the texture, growing up I always wished I had wavy hair. It looked nice when she pressed it, but when it was kinky, it just looked nuts.” She felt like an outlier at school. “My mother pressed it, and she put all these ponytails in it. She felt its sandy brown color blended into her skin, leaving her hair looking flat and without character. Game over,” Blige says.īefore Salt-N-Pepa added some seasoning to her life, Blige struggled with her hair. “When I saw Salt’s hair was platinum, it was done. Blige’s gaze drifted to their intricate blonde asymmetrical cuts. As a teenager, she was sitting watching television in the Schlobohm housing projects in Yonkers when Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shake Your Thang” video came on. Nothing’s ever good enough,” she explains.īlige’s journey to beauty acceptance has been a long one. “If you’ve been beat down mentally by someone, you’re never pretty enough. She attributes her discomfort to a mix of insecurities, including a childhood scar under her left eye and a tumultuous 13- year marriage to her ex-husband and former manager. The nine-time Grammy Award winner has been in the spotlight since at least 1992, when she released her debut album, What’s the 411?-meaning she’s performed, acted, and been the unwitting subject of paparazzi photos for the better part of her adult life, all while feeling uncomfortable in her own skin. “I didn’t feel beautiful-like for real for real, not just ‘Hey, I’m pretty’ but actually believing it-until about 2016,” Blige tells me. So it may come as a surprise that Blige’s own sense of beauty has been hard-won. Under the blinding LED lights ringing the salon, Blige looks relaxed-a legend can make the most of even a makeshift spotlight.
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She flashes a nervous smile to the chorus of workers standing on the sidewalk and heads to her glam trailer to prepare for look one: a sumptuous floor-length, espresso-brown faux-fur coat. The Queen of Hip-Hop Soul emerges from her Range Rover wearing her signature “ghetto fabulous” style: a logo-heavy Gucci bucket hat, cropped leather jacket, shorts, matching thigh-high Gucci GG monogram boots, and chains-lots of them. The bustling ceases when Blige’s car pulls up to the front, everyone standing still in their spots as if Queen Elizabeth’s carriage were making its way down the Brooklyn street. In the back of the salon, the singer’s go-to stylist, Jason Rembert, is reviewing a rack of clothing pulled for the photoshoot, caressing a yellow-and-black-printed puffer coat. Not even 100 percent of the correct vibes-glowy mirrors, purple patent swivel chairs with the sheen of hard candy, and walls bedecked with fellow icons like Macy Gray and Lil’ Kim-can assuage the jittery crew. A gust of nerves and angst passes through the airy salon. Blige appears for her cover shoot on a balmy Thursday morning in Brooklyn that the singer is her own weather event.