When I was 12 I wrote Mariah Carey a fan letter. She had suffered a very public emotional breakdown (as worded by her team at the time) and I sought to reassure her that her legion of fans, known by the collective noun “Lambily”, had her back. I impressed upon her that the only reason her debut movie, Glitter, had engendered such censorious critical and public wrath was bad timing: it was slated for release the same week as the 9/11 attacks. One day, I insisted, the culture would catch up to her genius. I told her she could call me on my parent’s landline anytime outside school hours and, smearing on some Coca-Cola lip smacker, sealed the letter with a kiss.
Fast forward through the requisite adolescent rejection of girlhood and all its infantile associations, including Carey and her five-octave range, and it turns out I had remarkable foresight. The 90s and 2000s icons – Mariah, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton – have all re-entered the cultural conversation, and it’s a repentant one in which we’re saying, “Sorry for all the sexism!” Even Glitter went from being much-maligned to a considerable cringey, camp classic.
