Battle of the Photogenic Non-White Pop Divas Who Are Losing Their Minds

Diana Ross was the first non-white photogenic pop diva. She was groomed by Motown Records to compete with camera-friendly white pop stars like Julie London and Doris Day to light up shows like Hullabaloo or Ed Sullivan with her trendy hair and clothes. For the first time in American history, teenagers of all races were concerned about the hair, clothes, and love life of a black woman. Forget the march on Selma. This was the major moment for the civil rights movement. Diana went on to have a film career (albeit a short one) in which she served as nothing less than a glamorous leading lady.

Since then, the non-white photogenic pop diva has lost her groundbreaking political relevance, but still remains a cash cow for record companies. A lean and well-scrubbed black woman who is pretty and can sing inoffensive pop tunes will always sell records. She may even be a box-office draw. In the mid-'80s, Whitney Houston -- a talented former Seventeen model -- released her debut self-titled album. It went straight to #1 and stayed there for a long, long time as would all of her subsequent albums. Her popular videos, while devoid of edge or any particular grasp of rhythm, were showcases for the camera-friendly Whitney throughout the '80s and early '90s. The Bodyguard, her hit film debut, spawned the most successful soundtrack album of all time. Soon, she would become annoyingly ubiquitous. She was paid millions to sing the AT&T jingle and, during the Gulf War, recorded the national anthem and made it into a hit single. Such success would engender a certain level of resentment, so when Mariah came on the scene threatening to steal Whitney's title, a lot of us were only too happy to sit back with a bucket of popcorn and watch the catfight.

It's hard for a lot of us to remember ever feeling affection for Mariah Carey. But in the early '90s -- when she first came to our attention, tenderly stroking the microphone in her debut video, "Vision of Love" -- she seemed genuinely unsure of herself. And there was that range. Each successive power ballad or dance-flavored pop song to hit #1 was a dog call from heaven above. In the inevitable rivalry between Whitney and Mariah, most of us rooted for Mariah because she was the newbie underdog. The voice was better because it went higher. If Whitney was Blair, the privileged poised beauty from Facts of Life, then Mariah was Jo, the scruffy and gutsy girl attending Eastland Prep on a scholarship.

There was another big difference. While Whitney had been born into pop superstardom (her mother was gospel legend Cissy Houston, and her aunt was Dionne Warwick), Mariah had slept her way into it. This would become painfully apparent when Mariah married the man who discovered her, Tommy Mottola, the mobbed-up just-divorced president of Sony Records who was one hundred and seven years older than she was. Their wedding was described by the New York Post as "more of a coronation." Mariah's Vera Wang gown was an exact copy of Princess Diana's wedding dress and the ceremony featured dozens of attending pre-pubescent girls tossing rose petals at celebrity guests like Donald Trump. That would be the beginning of the end of Mariah. Oh, sure, she would still sell multi-platnum albums for the next several years, but no one really liked her. She went from being the girl next door you wanted to hang with to the CEO's wife you had to be nice to. Those cutoffs and belly shirts started to seem whorish and pathetic, and her over-produced nineteen-octave range started to offend. When she got divorced, she found the hootch within and became Mariah, the CEO's slutty, bitter, surgically-enhanced ex-wife. Soon, thanks to her newfound fashion-victimhood, the world was Mariah's gynecologist as she unleashed a series of videos that celebrated her almost mannered descent into ho-dom. Despite all that, a record-breaking recording contract with Virgin Records and a film debut in the can left Mariah's future looking bright.

Meanwhile, Whitney wasn't winning any accolades for restraint, either. The formerly squeaky-clean workhorse started blowing off concerts and television appearances, and there were reports of her walking around with facial injuries that seemed to be inflicted by her crackhead has-been husband, Bobby Brown. One fateful day she was detained at a Honolulu airport when security found a bag of pot in her bag. More rumors surfaced about her abuse of crystal meth, prompting even Liz Smith -- the most publicist-friendly gossip columnist of all time -- to write her an open letter begging her to get help.

I guess the millennium was a hard time to be a photogenic non-white pop diva. Even Diana Ross, the mother of all non-white photogenic pop-divas, had a run-in of her own with airport security. Mariah would lose it, too, posting Anne Heche-like messages on her website and checking into a hospital due to "exhaustion" after "Loverboy," her first single for Virgin Records, failed to hit #1 on the pop charts. It was then that Whitney would pull ahead of Mariah in their battle for world domination. Just as Mariah committed herself very publicly to a lockdown facility, Whitney -- showing signs of newfound sobriety -- would sign an even more lucrative recording contract with Arista Records. And while Mariah's semi-autobiographical film debut, Glitter, had what little audience it had laughing in all the wrong places, Whitney's 1993 recording of the national anthem hit the charts once more following the World Trade Center attacks. Her last album, My Love is Your Love, was not breaking any sales records, but it was a critical hit. It seemed that the evolution from Seventeen model into crack whore had provided Whitney with a little street cred and a sympathy-inducing patina. And in an age of tearful Barbara Walters confessions, Whitney's silence on the matter was refreshingly dignified.

Winner : Houston 2002

But as recent history unravelled, Whitney is back to her crack loving antics while Mariah on the other hand was emancipated with the release of her latest album which infact was the number 1 album of 2005. For good measure, Mariah is currently touring the world via Adventure of Mimi.

Winner : Carey 2006