Mariah Carey
After launching on an intense note, Meghan Markle‘s Spotify podcast, Archetypes, continues to deal with topics of importance to women. On Tuesday, Markle and pop icon Mariah Carey discussed the difficulties of going au naturel with textured hair in Hollywood in the latest episode.
Titled ‘The Duality of Diva With Mariah Carey, the 46-minute-long episode saw the two talk about topics ranging from what it means to be called a “diva” and Carey’s upbringing and music career to their personal experiences growing up as biracial women. The conversation turned to hair when Markle brought up Carey’s ‘Dreamlover’ music video.
Speaking about the 1993 hit, Carey recalled, “People were saying, ‘girl next door’ … because there was also this ambiguity about me, racially, that fed into that, and those curls.” She went on to say, “Here’s the thing: They didn’t know how to do my hair, because if it was a white hairdresser that had never dealt with textured hair, they would tend to do a different thing. And my hair would be like, ‘You’re not doing that!”. The Grammy award-winner also went on to say that even if she had an exclusive hairstylist who worked with natural hair “it would become too much product and too much weight.”
Screenshots from a recent Zoom call with Meghan Markle show her natural hair. Photo: Twitter.com
Markle also weighed in on her experience with the dilemma and talked about having her hair “shellacked” by “so much heavy hair grease” in the past, when pros would try to “slick those roots down”. The mother-of-two continued to share a heartwarming anecdote of how her grandma did her hair as a kid. “My hair is so curly and it’s so, so thick,” the 40-year-old remarked. “I just remember as a child because my mom’s Black, and so my grandma Jeanette would do my hair. She’d go, ‘Just hold on to the sink.’ And I would grip my little hands on both sides. You have no luxury of being tender-headed.”
Both Markle and Carey also talked about how the frustration didn’t begin in just Hollywood, but was something they faced even as children. “Nobody knew how to do her hair, even as a little girl,” said the singer. “I think sometimes when it’s the other way around, you get the benefit of someone who’s dealt with textured hair.”
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