Sisterhood for sale

"It'll make you feel strong and confident, just like Mary!" testified a fan in an interstitial package that ran during Mary J. Blige's appearance on HSN this weekend. Mary was there to hawk her My Life perfume, which was made out to be a magical elixir that would make you as perfectly imperfect, positive and real as the woman whose name was on the bottle. Since it is simply impossible to sell something on television without hyperbole, some amount of dishonesty and spin was to be expected. Adding to the nonsense potential and overall difficulty of the exercise was the fact that Mary appeared on HSN no fewer than four times this weekend, sitting on the couch for stretches as long as 90 minutes. Instead of an entire line of product to promote, she had only a fragrance to fill the space with, and so she did what any good megastar would: she talked about herself for much of the time.

Mostly, she made it so that talking about the perfume and talking about herself (and, by extension, her followers) were one and the same. My Life is named after Mary's second album, the one that established her as a misery/empathy queen (What's the 411? was heartfelt and easy to sing along to, but she didn't write a lot of it and it now plays like a collection of fantastic singles as opposed to a cohesive statement). Very early on, Mary established herself as a people's champ -- someone who'd been through everything and who was going through more, sometimes right in front of us (like her abusive relationship with K-Ci Hailey). At some point between then and now, it seemed that commiseration became Mary's brand -- even after she absolved herself of drama, she felt the need to remind her "troubled sisters" in "Good Woman Down" from 2005's The Breakthrough, "I still have troubles, too / You're not alone." More than anything, it sounded like a plea.

Confessing as an angle versus actual confessing is one thing -- music can be therapeutic no matter where it's coming from. If nothing else Mary was just doing what she does -- singing the blues. To then use that same rhetoric to sell perfume, however, verges on despicable. Even though pop music is product, too, the case can always be made for more art and expression; the same cannot be said for perfume. Mary J. Blige's entire shtick is based on trust and healing and for her to attempt to use that to sell something that is 100 percent pure product is so slimy ("My whole thing is to do good. My intentions are to do good. And that's basically why I did the fragrance," she explains virtually incoherently in the video above). Mary talked about putting her heart and soul into the creation of this fragrance, which was either a foolhardy waste of time or a bald-faced lie. Now that she has her audience hooked, she apparently thinks they will buy anything. That kind of egotism runs rampant in pop stars, but usually manifests itself in the form of shitty, samey albums. Branching out in this way and with this rationale (during one moment that my DVR ate, she referred to the perfume as a "blessing" to her fans!) feels infinitely worse.

Obviously, Mary J. Blige is not the first celebrity to attach her name to a perfume or any other useless thing that isn't even tangentially related to her craft. But this endeavor was sold via the cruelest of spins. It would be different if Mary's hook wasn't touching people on a personal level (however foolhardy and ego-fueled that is to begin with). For her to use this bond (or illusion of one) as grounds to make an easy buck reminds me of something Sarah Palin might do: pander to an audience by claiming to be one of them, while obviously not being so and profiting off people's gullibility. It's gross and it calls to question the veracity of an entire empire -- and that's a big problem when said empire is based on what's supposed to be honest emotion. (The donation of a dollar to Mary's FAWN Foundation for every $46 bottle sold was on one hand nice and on the other a joke of a pittance that only served as lip service for Mary's empathic persona.)

The video above isn't cut up to yield a laugh a second; rather it's to support my point. There are funny parts, I think ("It does not feel good to not feel good. It feels horrible."; "If I was a fragrance bottle on the counter, I would want to look like this."), but mostly it's just sad. This is the nail in the coffin of Mary's trustworthiness. As an R&B and pop singer, in a way, Mary's job from the jump was to sell her soul; watching her do it so literally is disturbing.

Comments

[Crystal]

"As an R&B and pop singer, in a way, Mary's job from the jump was to sell her soul; watching her do it so literally is disturbing."

The above comment is exactly why I couldn't bear to watch her on HSN. I wondered what she would endlessly ramble on about. The one time I flipped to see the train wreck in progress she looked so uncomfortable. I couldn't take it any longer.

[Heather]

You are right. I love Mary but this is so fucked up. Does she not have enough money that she has to degrade herself this way?

[Sue Ellen]

When she was a judge during the American Idol auditions, I was so excited. Turns out she had absolutely nothing to say to anyone. Even worse, she couldn't even keep it together when one of the joke contestants came on, and she was basically laughing out loud. But here's the thing: she wasn't doing it derisively. She obviously felt bad about it and wanted to be supportive to everyone who auditioned, but she never really showed up. I point this out because I just don't think that, while Mary the performer is a force of nature, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of there there when it comes to Mary the person.

If you look back at all the interviews she did before No More Drama (which was really pushed as her moment of self-awareness), she was really tough to pin down. People would ask her about her upbringing, all the bad shit she did, how she got the scar on her face, and she would either dissemble or just say something to the effect of "I'm trying to put that behind me". In retrospect, I think she might have been coached to be coy because she simply never had much to say. When the "healing" began, she suddenly had tons to talk about, but it was basically the same rehearsed litany of "No more drama, I'm just fine".

I think, despite what the Mary of the last 8 or 9 years would have you believe, she doesn't really have any self-awareness--just Self-Help. Which is exactly the kind of shitty perfume so many people put on to feel strong and confident. Just like Mary.

[SheRealLight]

Rich, this is the only review you've done in all these years I disagree with. I don't really think it's that serious. Mary's fans "know" her history; it would be a different story if she was just springing her confessions on us for the first time to play with our feelings-but she's not.

If you are a Mary fan you've stuck by her during abuse, tragically low self-esteem, drug addiction, religious conversion, marriage etc. Her narrative is well-documented. True there's only so much you can say about a one-product product line before you devolve into nonsensical babbling, but she is definitely not the first person in home shopping history to go that route.

PS So what does Marc Jacobs' posing butt-a naked with only his new cologne Bang covering his crotch tell us? :-)

@Sue Ellen: Re Mary's history of not having much to say, remember she's publicly admitted to a long-time coke addiction. I believe she estimated 80-90% of the covers she did for VIBE magazine she was stoned. So I wouldn't expect an intelligent narrative from her or any addict at that point.

Mary's original. She pioneered the hip-hop soul genre that is still in play today.

[matthew]

I don't like her horrible music anyway

[Brando]

Uhhh!! That post was pitch perfect. Preach!

[Cath]

Ick Mary, I need a shower.

[KyleCollins]

Ehhh I see it like this: the perfume is a souvenir of brand Mary. If someone smells it and gets a rush of that "yes-I-can-survive" feeling that brand Mary is built upon? No harm done. We use products for different purposes all the time, right?

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[Sam]

I was actually watching this with my mom when we were channel surfing this weekend. I couldn't believe how ridiculous she sounded. She was acting like her perfume was the elixir of life or something.

[gwyneth cornrow]

speak of Mary, have you seen this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd3D2w-OJxo&feature=player_embedded

and also, Christian Louboutin? WTF?

[sexygaga]

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[winter boots]

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[Asics Shoes]

True there's only so much you can say about a one-product product line before you devolve into nonsensical babbling, but she is definitely not the first person in home shopping history to go that route.

[ed hardy]

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[cheap ralph lauren polo]

, but she is definitely not the first person in home shopping history to go that route.