Mariah Carey Natural Glow

Mariah Carey shows up about fifty years too late for her own quinceanera in the new issue of Paper Magazine, where she can also be seen stripped of about half her body in some strategically non-nude topless photos. Paper wanted to recreate their Kim Kardashian “Break the Internet” cover, but Carey kept drinking all the champagne.

The grounded pop sensation is wrapping up her Las Vegas residency and opens up to the magazine about not being a diva (but actually being a diva,) Sin City dentistry, and more dumb stuff and things. Carey declares “I’ve never had a diva moment” but when the interviewer responds “No?” Carey clarifies like any good psychopath:

No…Actually, I have had diva moments, and then people can’t handle it. I guess it’s a little intense, because I come from a true diva: My mother is an opera singer. And that’s a real diva, you know — Juilliard diva. And so other people that are like, ‘I’m a diva,’ it’s like, ‘Honey, you don’t know what a diva is, you didn’t grow up with my mom.’ [Laughs] And I mean it as a compliment, or I wouldn’t be the person I am without experiencing that. And so when people hear me say, like, ‘Dahling da da da da’ and talk that way, it’s kinda like I’m channeling my mother. Not that she says ‘dahling’ all the time, but like that voice is… it’s like I inadvertently do it, and I don’t do it to be disrespectful, I just do it and it just happens and it’s like, [in diva voice] ‘I don’t even know why.’

I’ll have what she’s having. When asked about recommendations for first time Las Vegas visitors (redefining the term “softball question” here,) Carey responds:

Well, if they have kids they should take them to the dentist that [my kids] go to, because it’s a kids’ dentist and they have all these games there…I’m sitting here waiting to go to the dentist, like, ‘Let me get to Vegas so I can get to the dentist!’

Games meaning enough nitrous oxide to take down a charging rhino. Carey hasn’t been burdened with reality for about two decades. But her delusion has consequences. The original Photoshopper for Paper Magazine took his own life when he was told his assignment was to fit Carey’s entire body on the cover. The highly-skilled replacement team tirelessly worked away at their computers until their fingers were bloody nubbins. But just like the suffering of her girdles, Carey won’t know the effort that went into these pictures. We should all be so lucky. This is the face of someone living life to the fullest. And batshit craziest. 

^{Photo Credit: Paper Magazine}