If the Lambily knows one thing about Mariah Carey, it’s that she never wants to be seen from the left side — until now.
Carey, 54, kicked off the new year by offering fans a glimpse of her rarely seen left side. “New year, new beginnings … taking a picture from my ‘bad side!’” she quipped via Instagram on Monday, January 1.
The snap showed Carey dressed in her festive best, wearing a sparkly silver gown and holding a matching balloon. She wore her hair in loose ’90s-inspired curls, which she paired with understated glam and a glossy pink lip.
While Carey’s “bad side” has become a joke between the pop star and her fans, the origin of her anxiety around it is actually quite sad. In a 2016 episode of the docuseries Mariah’s World, Carey explained that a photographer at her first-ever photo shoot — which happened when she was just 19 — told her she should only ever be shot from the right.
“This is your good side,” Carey said, imitating the photographer. “Only let people photograph you from your good side. Ever.”
Carey went on to say that she felt like she understood what the woman was talking about and for years wouldn’t let photographers shoot her from the left. She explained that she gradually became more accepting of her left side, so long as photographers lit their pictures well and makeup artists did a good job with her glam.
In 2009, Carey said that she was starting to come around to her left side, in part because her then-husband, Nick Cannon, was a fan. (The former couple, who share 12-year-old twins Moroccan and Monroe, were married from 2008 to 2016.)
“I don’t feel like, ‘Oh, I have to be on this side, or I have to be on this side.’ I really had specific things that someone told me when I was 19 starting in the business and I listened to them. I don’t care anymore,” Carey told the Associated Press at the time. “Sometimes I like that left side — and Nick likes that side better anyway.”
Nearly a decade later, Carey shared another rare photo of her “bad side,” this time in honor of #ThrowbackThursday. “A picture of my bad side I kind of like! (Quite the rarity! 😂),” she joked via Instagram in June 2018 alongside a vintage snap from the mid-1990s.
In the comments section, her fans assured her that the “bad side” is all in her head. “Wut if that is your bad side then I don’t have a good side 😱,” joked one social media user. Another fan replied, “Queen of having a beautiful ‘bad’ side.”
While Carey has become more accepting of her left side, she still sometimes chooses to showcase her right side during talk show appearances. “I always switch chairs because that’s her better side,” Andy Cohen explained during an April 2022 interview on Today With Hoda & Jenna as the screen behind him showed Carey sitting on the left side of the stage of the Watch What Happens Live set, where Cohen, 55, normally sits. “I love her. [She] answers everything.”
