Mariah Carey gave a very powerful speech at Variety‘s Power of Women lunch this week!
There was just one problem… she got Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston mixed up, and in doing so, pretty much overshadowed her own speech as far as important and impactful moments go! Oops! At least it was HIGHlarious!!!
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During the lunch, Mariah got into trouble when she joked about how she knew the teleprompter was going to break — which it did, BTW — and went off-script to assure fans that she had cue cards with her speech on it, anyways.
Riffing without use of the teleprompter, the legendary singer joked about the situation while low-key name dropping the wrong woman along the way (below):
“This prompter thing [being broken]? I predicted it. This is why I have cue cards because I was watching Reese Witherspoon doing her speech – I am completely off speech right now – why can’t it be the one that’s right in front of you? Oh Lord, well I will just get into it and trust these prompters will work.”
Funny, we suppose, except it wasn’t Reese Witherspoon giving a speech minutes before Mariah did… it was Jennifer Aniston! Oops!!!
It appeared Carey had no idea she messed up, as she rolled right on with the rest of her speech. So, come to think of it, perhaps her little Jennifer Lopez controversy was an honest mistake? LOLz!!
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Now, jokes aside, she did make a very powerful speech at the event, too. During her time (without the prompter!), the We Belong Together song got real about how hard it was to gain courage and hold out for what she knew was right throughout her career, despite being controlled by “a lot of very powerful men.”
Carey explained (below):
“I was 18 years old when I got my first record deal. A lot of very powerful men controlled my career — what I wore, who I worked with, and every aspect of my overall image. Believe me, that can be very intimidating and confining to a young girl just getting started, trying to express herself artistically. It took a lot of hard work, inner strength and believing in myself, but slowly I gained the courage to emerge from that stifling control by a group of men.”
Amen, Mariah!
At the end of the speech, the Always Be My Baby singer added her thanks for “each woman in this room and all the women who have come forward” with their stories of bad professional experiences and other misconduct, before concluding with the following triumphant line that drew cheers from the entire audience (below):
“Above all, they’re triumphs over the misogynistic society of corporate a**es that we deal with every day.”
Amen!!! So well said!
Just… work on that Jennifer Aniston/Reese Witherspoon thing, girl! LOLz!!!!
[Image via FayesVision/Zibi/WENN]
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