Much has been made of Meghan Markle being a biracial woman, and on the latest episode of her podcast Archetypes, the actor turned royal turned podcaster spoke to a woman who can uniquely relate to her journey: Mariah Carey.
Markle told Carey that the singer was “so formative” for her in a time when representation of biracial women in the media was so low, citing Carey as one of the first examples Markle saw of “someone who kind of looks like me.” She specifically cited the 1993 video for “Dreamlover” video, and Carey took the opportunity to reflect on her curly hair at the time, how it was perceived by the media and how it was a challenge for some hairdressers.
“People were saying girl next door, dadadada, because there was also this ambiguity about me, racially, that fed into that, and those curls,” said Carey on the episode, “The Duality of Diva,” which you can listen to here. “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.’ And then, if [it was] somebody that had only dealt with ethnic hair, it would become too much product.”
The two women bonded over their in-between hair texture and the products they’ve both encountered, like Murray’s hair pomade. “When I was growing up, my mom didn’t know how to, like, take the mass out of my hair,” said Carey, adding, “Nobody knew how to do my hair, like, even as a little girl…. My mom is white, my dad is Black. I think sometimes when it’s the other way around, you get the benefit of someone who has textured hair.”
“No, because my hair is so curly and it’s so thick,” countered Meghan Markle. “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.”
