I told her that they were five women sharing the message that women can do anything: women can be strong and powerful and they can take charge of their own lives.
I explained that each woman had a different nickname. The rest is history. I finally said that the Black lady was Scary Spice. In the video my daughter was watching, Mel B, aka. Scary Spice was wearing her hair in its natural, curly, afro state. A few Black female friends of mine have said that they have been treated differently when they have worn their hair in its natural state.
One particular friend said that she would never go to an interview without straightening and relaxing her hair. As a practising Muslim who wears a hijab and a headscarf, I also acclimatise, adjust and adapt. It is freezing here; but maybe there is also an underlying need to be accepted. Absolutely nothing! The conversation ended when we reached our destination. But it lingered in my mind. We are constantly fed stereotypes from the mainstream media and discourse.
I actually think we are fed intentional misconceptions which affect our sense of reality. So when people see Black women speaking out now, society seems to generally think that is a problem. The reason that Scary Spice is called Scary Spice is because of hundreds and hundreds of years of British Colonialism and oppression.
L ast time I met Melanie Brown, she could not have been happier. The artist formerly known as Scary Spice was enjoying success as a judge on The X Factor, the public adored her once again, and most important of all, she was ecstatically in love with her husband, Stephen Belafonte.
Not only were they soulmates, she told me, they shared an extraordinary intimacy; after seven years of marriage, they had sex five times a day. They were so compatible, she said, that she had basically married herself. She showed me the wedding-vow-renewal ring he had just bought her, and told me she was the luckiest woman in the world.
In her new memoir, Brutally Honest, Brown reveals that her marriage could not have been more unhappy. She claims Belafonte was abusive, and that she could only get through the day by snorting cocaine for breakfast.
Had she not finally gathered the courage to leave, she believes she may well have ended up dead. Two weeks after that interview was published in Weekend, Brown attempted suicide. Somehow she managed to drag herself out of hospital to appear as a judge on the final of The X Factor. Viewers were shocked by her appearance: her cheek was bruised, and there were scratches on her arms.
She was not wearing her wedding ring. What happened? Today, we meet in a photo studio in London. I can hear her laughter — throaty, raucous — before I see her. Brown, now 43, tends to dominate a room. She is in a white dressing robe, getting made up and giving her team the lowdown on Peter Andre , a former boyfriend.
And he was so polite. And she still likes to talk about sex — her voracious appetite, her many lovers, her attraction to men and women. I ask if she remembers showing me that ring four years ago. It was just lie after lie after lie, and I got used to lying. Can I please stay at work a little bit longer — or is there a park I can go to with my kids? In , he pleaded no contest to a charge of battery against his former partner, estate agent Nicole Contreras.
He also has convictions for theft and vandalism, and admitted to beating a duck to death with a brick. When they met, she says, she was in a vulnerable place, having recently separated from the actor Eddie Murphy.
A DNA test proved that Murphy was the father, and he now sees year-old Angel regularly; but the relationship was over. Brown was distraught she still calls Murphy the love of her life. Soon afterwards, in , she met Belafonte. The devil shows up with everything you want. He was Prince Charming back then. He was sexy. He was very flattering. For how long was he like this?
I need to be more attentive, I need to make him happier. So I stay in it, and it just snowballs. Does she think he loved her? The Spice Girls were an instant phenomenon, still the bestselling female group of all time.
While the swagger and insouciance have always been part of her character, Brown says that in other ways she is an old-fashioned girl who just wants to please. Her parents might have stood out, as a mixed-race couple in s Leeds her father was from St Kitts and Nevis , her mother is white and Yorkshire-born , but they were conservative. They wanted their daughter to get a decent education, hold down a good job, to marry and stay married.
In , she had a third daughter, Madison, with Belafonte. The last thing she wanted, she says, was to embarrass her family by being the single mother of three daughters.
Ever wondered how the band got their nicknames? It was actually super random and stuck when no one expected it to. By Sagal Mohammed. Well, now we have the answer. Melanie Brown told HuffPost Live it was all down to a "lazy journalist" Scary Spice said: "It was actually a lazy journalist that couldn't be bothered to remember all our names, so he just gave us nicknames.
I don't mind my name. Do you like your name?
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