Each morning, Mary J. Blige wakes up and recites the next phrases: “Good morning, Beautiful. I like you. I received you. I want you.” A robust, uplifting assertion that may be inconsequential to some, however to Blige, it is every little thing. She began saying these phrases to herself whereas filming “Mudbound” in 2016, the 12 months that confidence actually grew to become part of her id. “I did not really feel stunning — like for actual for actual, not simply ‘Hey, I am fairly’ however really believing it — till about 2016,” Blige says in the February issue of “Elle.” A lot of her journey to self-love and acceptance began within the salon chair as a teen, when she discovered the colour that will grow to be her signature look.
“Once I noticed Salt’s hair was platinum, it was executed. Sport over,” she says of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shake Your Thang” music video, the catalyst for her personal industry-disrupting look. “I used peroxide to carry my hair coloration all the way in which as much as platinum.” Previous to this realization, Blige struggled with accepting her hair. “Due to the feel, rising up I at all times wished I had wavy hair. Each little Black lady needed wavy hair,” she says. Her mom would press it and put it in ponytails, and Blige would get weaves and perms, however as soon as she began experimenting with colors, she grew to become uniquely herself.
“Hair is gorgeous, however I can not carry it with confidence if I am not assured.”
“I will not say hair gave me energy. I might say I give my hair energy,” Blige says. “No matter I am sporting, I can have the energy to hold it now, which I used to be not capable of have within the final layer of my life. Hair is gorgeous, however I can not carry it with confidence if I am not assured. As a result of then it’d simply be a weave, or it’d simply be blond hair, or my [natural] hair.”
When Blige entered the music {industry} at 18 years previous in 1989, she already knew who she was. “I used to be already blonde. I used to be already pink. I used to be already doing these colours. I wasn’t looking for a picture. I used to be my very own picture,” she says. She was by no means going to evolve to society’s requirements, the identical method she wasn’t going to evolve to the kinds of her friends as a teen. “I used to be sitting on the shelf as a result of they did not know what to do with me, as a result of I used to be not going to placed on a robe.” Succumbing was by no means an choice.
Now, as Blige prepares to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show alongside fellow {industry} greats Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar, she’s representing many years of “reinvention” and wonder each in and out. “I will be entrance and middle — Mary J. Blige, in her glory and greatness and swagger,” she says.
