{"id":79274,"date":"2020-10-01T00:29:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T21:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-mariah-carey-jessica-simpson-and-more-make-shameful-secrets-relatable\/"},"modified":"2020-10-01T00:29:24","modified_gmt":"2020-09-30T21:29:24","slug":"how-mariah-carey-jessica-simpson-and-more-make-shameful-secrets-relatable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-mariah-carey-jessica-simpson-and-more-make-shameful-secrets-relatable\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson and more make shameful secrets relatable"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson and more make shameful secrets relatable<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Mariah Carey\u2019s new book makes it official: We are in the golden age of the celebrity memoir.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Meaning of Mariah<\/a>\u201d \u2014 published Tuesday and already a critically acclaimed best seller \u2014 follows three recent, blockbuster confessionals by female superstars: \u201cInside Out,\u201d<\/a> by Demi Moore, \u201cOpen Book,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 by Jessica Simpson, and Michelle Obama\u2019s \u201cBecoming.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

All four women have broken barriers. Carey holds multiple Guinness World Records, including the most No. 1 songs of any solo artist. Moore became the world\u2019s highest-paid actress when she signed to do 1996\u2019s \u201cStrip<\/a>tease\u201d for $12.5 million (an achievement that earned her the sexist app<\/a>ellation \u201cGimme Moore\u201d). Simpson\u2019s fashion and accessories line brings in $1 billion annually. Obama, of course, went into the history books in 2008 as America\u2019s first black first lady.<\/p>\n

\"Mariah
Mariah Carey<\/span>Dennis Leupold<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet each woman, in her memoir, has gone deeper than she had to, inviting fans, casual observers and the merely curious into complicated and painful parts of her life. Why risk sharing so much, especially since social media<\/a> is the cheapest, quickest and most curated way to control one\u2019s image?<\/p>\n

Celebrity memoir, it should be noted, isn\u2019t for the weak. Mick Jagger, Billy Joel \u2014 even Oprah Winfrey, mother of Confessional Culture \u2014 have all returned massive advances rather than go through with writing their own.<\/p>\n

For those stars who go all in, however, the chance to tell their stories, unmediated and unfiltered through any lens but their own, is a powerful lure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that a book gives a person control over their narrative in a way that no other medium really does,\u201d said literary agent Nicole Tourtelot, who has worked with celebrity authors. \u201cThe connection between writer and reader is so direct, so intimate. And I think that\u2019s particularly compelling for people who are constantly photographed, written about, talked about and whose image is created, in a way, via the public perception and conversation. To be able to fully explain oneself and have hours of undivided attention to craft your own narrative is an irresistible opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Inside
\u201cInside Out\u201d by Demi Moore<\/span>Courtesy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Memoir is also, as Demi Moore told the New York Times<\/a>, a way to work through who one was, and has become, without the attendant noise of tabloid and social media. \u201cInside Out,\u201d Moore said, wasn\u2019t so much about re-entering the spotlight as it was reclaiming her narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more of an awakening,\u201d she said of her book, \u201cthan a comeback.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the analogies between memoir-writing and therapy are wrong,\u201d said one celebrity ghostwriter who has helped several stars pen New York Times best sellers. Writing a memoir, she said, \u201cgive[s] all the things that happened to you a structure and a meaning. You can see patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore wrote about having been raped at age 15, leaving home at 16, youthful hookups with Rob Lowe and Jon Cryer, an early-stardom intervention over her drug use and her three marriages \u2014 including humbling stuff about her last, to the much-younger Ashton Kutcher. Moore describes having lost a six-month pregnancy during that marriage, her subsequent relapse into drug and alcohol addiction and succumbing to a threesome in hopes it would stave off divorce.<\/p>\n

For those of us who grew up watching Moore boldly push against societal constraints \u2014 her 1991 Vanity Fair cover, for which she posed pregnant and nude, was, at the time, truly scandalous \u2014 such revelations weren\u2019t just heartbreaking. They showed a beating heart beneath the steely veneer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to show him how great and fun I could be,\u201d Moore writes of her self-abasement. \u201c[I] went into contortions to try to fit the mold of the woman [Ashton] wanted his wife to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many a woman can relate. And what a balm to be reminded that fame and fortune insulate no one from life\u2019s indignities. Moore, at 56, reinvented herself by revealing herself.<\/p>\n

\""Open
\u201cOpen Book\u201d by Jessica Simpson.<\/span>Courtesy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Obama, in her memoir, went where no former first lady had before, opening up about her parents\u2019 views on sex, her own fertility struggles, a miscarriage, conceiving both of her daughters through IVF and attending marriage counseling.<\/p>\n

Simpson \u2014 whose memoir was called \u201cmesmerizing\u201d by no less than the New Yorker<\/a> \u2014 wrote about being sexually abused as a small child<\/a>, her fraught, messy relationship with on-and-off boyfriend John Mayer, her addiction to alcohol and sleeping pills and a near-lifelong battle with weight that began in 1997, at age 17, when record company executive Tommy Mottola told her: \u201cYou\u2019ve got to lose 15 pounds,\u201d demanding six-pack abs after her first single hit the charts.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Mottola also figures as a villain in Carey\u2019s memoir. Here, the self-described \u201celusive chanteuse\u201d reveals more about her marriage to Mottola \u2014 long rumored to be controlling and abusive \u2014 than ever before. She also writes about her traumatic childhood as the daughter of a black father and white mother, of her sister allegedly pimping her out as a 12-year-old girl (which her sister strongly denies), and of the time her then-husband Mottola allegedly put a knife to her cheek, threatening her looks and her livelihood, followed by her liberating affair with Derek Jeter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among other secrets.<\/p>\n

\"Tommy
Tommy Mottola and Mariah Carey<\/span>Alamy Stock Photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For millions who love the genre, myself among them, it\u2019s been interesting to watch this sudden spate of celebrity memoirs raise the bar \u2014 not just in terms of candidness but also quality. Obama, Moore, Simpson and Carey each worked with distinguished ghostwriters to produce not just best sellers that would generate headlines, but books that are highly readable and immediately entered the canon. (The ultimate modern celebrity memoir, for me, is Patti Smith\u2019s \u201cJust Kids\u201d \u2014 novelistic in its evocation of artistic strivers in late 1960s and \u201970s New York.)<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople\u2019s flaws are what make them lovable,\u201d the ghostwriter said. \u201cI think we love celebrities more if we know that they have suffered or screwed up than we would if they were just happy, perfect Barbie dolls\u201d \u2014 in essence, the opposite of most social-media avatars.<\/p>\n

The process itself has built-in guardrails: The celebrity speaks to her ghostwriter and editor in full confidence, and at the end can delete anything she\u2019s uncomfortable with before publication.<\/p>\n

But most celebrity authors no longer censor themselves much.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a culture, we\u2019re moving away from wanting our heroes and celebrities to be perfect,\u201d Tourtelot said, \u201cand are much more responsive to celebrities who show us a human side. Social media has brought down the veil and created a culture of self-disclosure. So either it\u2019s made it more professionally acceptable for celebrities to reveal all of themselves, warts and all, or it\u2019s raised the bar on the level of disclosure we expect as fans. Maybe both.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018As a culture, we\u2019re moving away from wanting our heroes and celebrities to be perfect.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The ghostwriter agrees. \u201cI think when they see it all written up in their own voice, the things they\u2019d been hiding often seem more like valuable, relatable stories than like shameful secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our most recent proof: The glamorous Mariah Carey, as controlling of her image as Barbra Streisand \u2014 both divas have long insisted on only side of their face be photographed \u2014 writes openly of a destitute and dangerous childhood, one that shaped her more than anything.<\/p>\n

As she recalls in her memoir, writing of a time police were called to her troubled home when she was just 6 years old: \u201cOne of the cops, looking down at me but speaking to another cop beside him, said, \u2018If this kid makes it, it\u2019ll be a miracle.\u2019 And that night, I became less of a kid and more of a miracle.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#How Mariah Carey, Jessica Simpson and more make shameful secrets relatable” Mariah Carey\u2019s new book makes it official: We are in the golden age of the celebrity memoir. \u201cThe Meaning of Mariah\u201d \u2014 published Tuesday and already a critically acclaimed best seller \u2014 follows three recent, blockbuster confessionals by female superstars: \u201cInside Out,\u201d by Demi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/09\/two-column-composite-template.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[73611,17209,73370,73780,73676,72530,71562,72186],"class_list":["post-79274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-9-30-20","tag-books","tag-celebrity-memoirs","tag-demi-moore","tag-jessica-simpson","tag-mariah-carey","tag-memoirs","tag-michelle-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}