Hi! My name is Cynthia Eddy. I'm 22 and I'm a dental assistant in an orthodontist's office here in Detroit, which means I spend all day telling people to open a little wider and all night on this computer. I have loved TLC since I was fifteen years old, when Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg came on the radio in my girlfriend's mother's car on the way to the roller rink in 1992 and I begged her to pull over so we could hear the rest. (She did not pull over. But she turned it up.)

I loved everything about them. The baggy clothes when everybody else was in tight dresses. The bright colors. The safe-sex message they wore right on their outfits, at a time when grownups were too embarrassed to say anything to us about it. They looked like girls from my school, if girls from my school were famous and fearless.

When FanMail came out this year I decided it was time to write some fan mail of my own. So this whole page is set up with the computer look of the album, like an inbox. Click a message to read it. And write me back! That's the whole idea.

TLC are three women out of Atlanta. Here they are, in alphabetical order, so nobody writes me about who I put first.

When the second album came out, the word was that the title was the three of them: Crazy was Left Eye, Sexy was Chilli and Cool was T-Boz. I'd say that's about right, but each of them is all three when she wants to be.

Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip (1992)
The first one, the one I wore out. Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg, Baby-Baby-Baby, Hat 2 da Back. My favorite: What About Your Friends. A whole song about who's really there for you when things get hard. I was fifteen and finding out the answer the hard way, and that song helped.

CrazySexyCool (1994)
They grew up on this one, and so did I. Creep and Waterfalls both went to number one, and it won the Grammy for best R&B album. It is one of the biggest-selling albums any girl group has ever made, and it deserves every copy. My favorite: Waterfalls. It's a pop song about drugs and AIDS and the choices people make, and it was number one all summer long in 1995. The video, with them standing on the water, still gives me chills.

FanMail (February 1999)
Worth the wait, and it was a long wait. Silver and blue and computers and the future, and it's named for the fans, which is us. No Scrubs and Unpretty both went to number one. My favorite: Unpretty. But that one gets its own message.

No Scrubs was number one for four weeks this spring, and you could not go anywhere in Detroit without hearing it. The mall, the bus, the break room at work. My boss, who is fifty-eight and listens to the oldies station, came in one day humming it and didn't know what it was. I told him and he was embarrassed.

It's a song about having standards, and about not letting a guy with nothing going for him waste your time. Every girl I know took it personally, in a good way. Some guys took it personally in a bad way and even made answer songs about it, which tells you it hit a nerve. The video, with the three of them all in silver in that spaceship, is where I got the colors for this page.

Unpretty is the number one song in America right now. It got there on the chart for September 18 and it's still there. That's TLC's fourth number one ever. I screamed in the car when I heard it on the countdown.

T-Boz wrote it with Dallas Austin, and the way I heard it, it started out as a poem she wrote. It's about a girl who keeps changing herself to make somebody else happy, until she figures out the problem was never her. The video goes further and takes on all the things girls do to their bodies to look like a magazine. I'm not going to put the words here. You know them, or you should.

Here is why it means so much to me.

I spend all day looking in people's mouths. And you would not believe how many girls, thirteen and fourteen years old, come in for their braces checks and won't smile. They put their hand over their mouth when they laugh. Some of them have perfectly nice teeth and still do it. I was one of those girls. I had a gap in the front and a boy in eighth grade made a joke about it in front of the whole lunch table, and I didn't smile with my mouth open again until I was nineteen.

And I had a boyfriend, a couple years ago, who had opinions about my hair and my clothes and my weight and the way I laughed too loud. I kept changing, a little at a time, and every time I changed he found something else. I finally left. I wish this song had been out then, because it would have saved me about a year.

So now when a girl in the chair won't smile, I tell her the gap is the best part, and I mean it. And I've got Unpretty on in the back room, and sometimes the other assistant and I sing along while we sterilize the instruments. Loud. Too loud. I don't care anymore. That's what the song did for me.

You write, I answer. Here are some of my favorites from this summer.

> Who is your favorite? You HAVE to pick one. -- Bridget, Toledo
I don't have to and I won't. It's TLC, not T. Next question.

> What does TLC stand for? -- Joey, age 12
The first letters of the three names, Tionne, Lisa and the first C, who was a girl named Crystal before Chilli joined. Chilli kept the C going. Lucky for all of us.

> Is it true that [rumor deleted by Cynthia]? -- Brandi
Brandi, honey, this is a no-gossip page. I'm sure you mean well. If it's not about the music or about them being good people, it doesn't go in my inbox.

> Where did you get the FanMail poster in your room? -- Lynn, Flint
I didn't say I had one, Lynn, but now I know you've been talking to my sister. It came from a record store in Southfield the week the album came out. I don't think they have any left. Sorry!

> Are they coming to Detroit?? -- Rachel
I hope so! If they do, I'll put it right at the top of this page in big blue letters. If you hear first, write me.

> Aren't you kind of old for a fan page? -- Chad
Chad, I'm 22. TLC are older than me. Their fans are grown women with jobs and car payments and dental benefits. We're not going anywhere. Thanks for stopping by though!

> Best TLC video ever? -- Bridget again
Waterfalls, and it isn't close.

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