Mariah After Midnight

Tonight is the singer's last night of indulgence before her personal trainer Patricia comes back on duty to whip her into shape for the Grammys. She's especially concerned about looking her best because of the jabs she took about the low-cut black number she wore a week earlier at the Golden Globes, custom-designed for her by Karl Lagerfeld. "The winner for the too-tight dress . . . goes to Mariah Carey," wrote one critic. "She takes the cake, and eats it too." Said another, "Carey, according to my seven-year-old, 'blew up like a truck tire.'" "Satin is a very unforgiving fabric," Mariah notes. "And what was I gonna do? Call frickin' Karl Lagerfeld and say, 'Can you please make it out of matte jersey instead?'" Of course, Mariah is used to having her outfits panned: She made Mr. Blackwell's worst-dressed list last year ("The world applauds your musical emancipation . . . but please -- leave that body to our imagination") and she often -- let's face it -- wears clothes tighter, tinier and generally more hooched-out than most thirty-five-year-old women. Still, though not a Zellwegerian stick figure by any stretch of the matte jersey, the five-foot-eight Mariah is considerably leaner than you might expect: not so much full-figured as sturdy. She says she has always tended to be muscular and notes that, in seventh grade, she beat every boy in her class at arm wrestling.

"I can't try to compete with people that weigh eighty pounds soaking wet when, look, I'm ethnic," she says. "I've got a butt, and I want to keep it because I like it. Yeah, it grows and it shrinks and it grows. That's what it does! I'm gonna pull it together and be as thin as I can be for the Grammys, but there's only a certain amount of weight that I wanna lose. The weight-obsessed workout monger is not my role model as a singer. They might be pop stars and icons, but they're not necessarily what I like to call a saaaanger. They ain't saaangin'."

Mariah's big voice may be her greatest source of pride -- it is, in her words, her "instrument" -- but she is equally keen to be known as one of the few pop stars who has had a hand in the writing and/or production of nearly every song she's ever recorded. "Even from the beginning, I said, 'If you want to put me with people to write with and collaborate, that's fine, but don't try to force me to record someone else's song.' I'm not saying I'm friggin' William Shakespeare. But even writing a melody, it's a release. And I really have a need to express myself."