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"PinterestFacebookI have to confess: I had never met a diva before Mariah Carey. I wasn&amp;#39;t even sure what one was, so I looked it up. First definition: a woman of outstanding and rare singing talent. Second definition: someone who is difficult to deal with. I&amp;#39;d met plenty of second-definition divas but never an actual one, so, naturally, I had outfit angst. What do you wear to meet a woman who sings in octaves most of us barely know exist? A ball gown? No, too dressy, plus mine has a burn on the sleeve. Jeans? No, too disrespectful. Red lipstick? No, too much. I settled on white pants, an AC/DC concert T-shirt and Chanel lip gloss. Meanwhile, Mariah answered the door herself, low-key, in a ponytail and pink hoodie. So this, I thought, is a diva?\nAnd after spending two hours chatting with her at Tommy Hilfiger&amp;#39;s beach house in East Hampton, New York, which Mariah had rented to work on her latest album (still unnamed as of press time), I realized the diva thing is only something we see on TV. In reality, this megastar was once a shy kid who was self-conscious about her multiracial identity, which marked her as different in the cookie-cutter suburbs of Long Island, New York, where she grew up. After what felt like a lifetime of hard knocks&amp;#8212;her parents divorced when she was three years old and her mother moved the family from one place to another, sometimes barely making ends meet&amp;#8212;she had her first best-selling album and her first seven-figure paycheck by 20, and a wedding train longer than Princess Di&amp;#39;s at 23. (She married Tommy Mottola, then chairman of her record label&amp;#39;s parent company, Sony Music, in 1993.) That may sound like a fairy tale, but Carey&amp;#39;s the first to scoff at those who say it was&amp;#8212;she paid her own way to the ball!\nHer marriage ended in divorce in 1998. Then, in 2001, Mariah checked herself into a hospital for exhaustion, creating a tabloid frenzy. But two months later she was onstage again, serenading the nation at the 9/11 &amp;quot;America: A Tribute to Heroes&amp;quot; telethon. Now, at 37, she&amp;#39;s sold 160 million albums worldwide, earned five Grammys and is tied for number-one hits in the United States with none other than Elvis Presley. Oh, and she launched her own M by Mariah Carey fragrance in September and is preparing for her new album tour. Privately, the star with a set of pipes and a sense of humor (she dubbed her home with ex Mottola &amp;quot;Sing Sing&amp;quot;) has created her own paradise in New York&amp;#39;s Tribeca neighborhood, where she moved in 2001. It&amp;#39;s a triplex penthouse apartment decorated in shades of gold and pink, with framed family snapshots covering practically every surface. At the photo shoot, Mariah gave me a complete home tour and opened up about everything from her obsession with lounge chairs to her dysfunctional childhood and her current love life.\nThank God, I told her, for that childhood. Had she grown up like every other girl on Long Island, she probably wouldn&amp;#39;t have had the ambition to make it so big.\nGlamour: I watched you on YouTube last night, singing &amp;quot;America the Beautiful&amp;quot; at the NBA finals in 1990&amp;#8212;one of your earliest TV appearances [at age 20].\nMARIAH CAREY: I was a little malnourished, wasn&amp;#39;t I?\nGlamour: Yes, you looked like you weighed 80 pounds. And most of that was hair.\nMC: [Laughs.] Well, I did my own hair then. No one even knew who I was! I was such a little girl.\nGlamour: How old were you when you got your first big paycheck?\nMC: I was about 20. I went from having $5 to getting a publishing advance of $1 million.\nGlamour: Tell me about your so-called Cinderella story.\nMC: [Laughs.] When Tommy [Mottola] signed me, I had two other record deals pending. I had already put in the hard work and I had my life planned but nobody likes to talk about that. I guess fairy tales make better stories.\nGlamour: Yes, they do. What advice would you give that little girl now? Or someone like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears who always seems to be messing up?\nMC: I wouldn&amp;#39;t want to speak to those people specifically, but I would say you need to be very centered, and spiritually know where you&amp;#39;re at, all the time. Don&amp;#39;t read the tabloids. Don&amp;#39;t be obsessed with what people are writing or saying. Live your life for you. My lifestyle has changed since making it. It&amp;#39;s not a financial struggle, but I&amp;#39;m still struggling in a lot of ways."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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