Theorizing Mariah: Crip Time and the Liberation of Temporal Norms

Recent articles have reminded us of something Mariah Carey has long insisted: she doesn’t acknowledge time. “Time is not something I acknowledge,” she once famously said, and it wasn’t a one-off; it’s become clear that her relationship to time isn’t just playful—it’s political in some ways.

As a critical disability scholar, I can’t help but read Mariah’s approach through the lens of crip time. Crip time, as theorized within disability studies, refers to the flexible, nonlinear, and often unpredictable ways disabled people experience time. It rejects normative timelines of productivity, healing, and life progression. It questions the relentless push for efficiency. It honors rest, pause, and unruly rhythms. And it makes space for bodies and minds that don’t conform to what society expects.

Mariah Carey may not use the language of crip time, but she embodies it. She is famously late—notoriously so. Her lateness isn’t just about diva behavior (though it certainly is fabulous); it’s also about taking time. Moving on her own clock. Refusing the pressure to always be on, always be producing, always be available. In an industry that demands urgency, instant albums, and constant reinvention, Mariah’s choice to not rush—to let time stretch, bend, and shimmer—is quietly radical. She's not trying to fit into your schedule—she's living her own fantasy.

We haven’t seen a new album in a while. But that absence isn’t emptiness—it’s emancipation. And every year, as the clock strikes midnight on November 1st, she reclaims the throne she never really left, whispering “It’s Time” and ushering in a season of glitter and nostalgia. She doesn’t need to stay on top of the charts to stay relevant—because she is the chart. A one-woman Butterfly effect.

Mariah has created a mythos where her past and present blend. She’s “eternally 12,” yes, but she also constantly references old albums, deep cuts, and archived footage on her social media. Time collapses in the Mariahverse. Her persona floats above chronology, a constellation of memories, outfits, songs, and moods. She curates her timeline like a scrapbook, not a straight line.

Mariah has also been open about living with bipolar disorder, a reminder that her relationship to time and energy isn’t just aesthetic—it’s embodied. Disability, in its many forms, disrupts normative time. It demands recalibration. Her refusal of the clock can be read, in part, as a response to that disruption. It’s slow brilliance. The Emancipation of Mimi wasn’t just a comeback—it was a temporal reawakening.

Mariah Carey is more than a pop icon—she’s a theorist of time. What she offers isn’t just music or performance; it’s a crip-temporal imagination. One that invites us to ask: What if we were never late, just right on our own time? What if taking time wasn’t failure, but freedom?

Of course, I recognize that many of us—especially disabled, racialized, poor, and precariously employed folks—don’t always have the privilege to live as Mariah does. We can’t always hit pause, disappear for years, or arrive on our terms. And yet, I still think it’s powerful to imagine. To dream of a world where time bends for us. Where being slow isn’t punished. Where the pressure to be always on, always producing, melts away like a whistle note into the sky.

In a world obsessed with being on time, being productive, being efficient—Mariah reminds us that joy, art, and healing don’t run on a stopwatch. And if anyone asks where she is? Just remember her words, why are you so obsessed with me?