Steffans - Confessions of a Video Vixen

Chapter Eleven: V IDEO G IRL

Like so many young girls, I grew up wanting to be famous. I used to watch television and dream about the Beverly Hills lifestyle seen in all of my favorite films. I wanted to live below that HOLLYWOOD sign and drive down Sunset Boulevard and over Mull-holland Drive in a Mercedes-Benz while wearing a designer scarf and huge black sunglasses. I wanted to be known by the rich and famous and be seen lunching with the in crowd. I wanted to live where they lived and do what they do. I wanted to belong.

I reached most of my goals, but I didnt do it in a conventional way. I did it using the oldest trick in the book. Sex. I am not always proud of what I did, and there are things that I would do over if I could. But I made the best out of what I started withan abusive mother and an absent father. I didnt write this book to excuse my past. I sat down to write this book because I think my story can serve as a warning to anyone aspiring to the kind of life I have led, and there are plenty of young people trying to do just that. Where young girls once aspired to be models and ballerinas, they now aspire to be hip hop video girls, the next hot girl in the hottest artists video. Having lived that life, I can say its not everything its cracked up to be.

My hips have swayed and popped on MTV while I danced on tabletops and poolside in some of your favorite videos. Ive had sex with some of the most delicious and insatiable men in the world. Heads of music labels, NBA stars, and Hollywoods A-listto say nothing of the emperors of hip hop. But theres an undersideif sex and drugs went hand in hand with rock and roll, they are just as rampant in hip hop. I wouldnt call this book a tell- all since there are many details I have kept to myself for the sake of not embarrassing some of the people still associated with me. Details such as which one of my music industry suitors I caught in bed with his male lover and which one of my NBA exes often kept track of me by using the OnStar device placed in the Mercedes-Benz he bought me, many times sending his associates to retrieve me from vacations and nights on the town.

Yet, in the middle of this wild ride that I call my life, I was met with challenges which could have ruined me, if it had not been for the power of change. I am writing my story because I have seen too many fourteen-year-old girls dressed up like their favorite pop icons and young women dying to be thin or saving up for the new pair of breast implants that they are sure will make them stars. Young women who look up to me and women like me and ask to be plugged into the same circles I desperately tried to escape. I have so much firsthand information to offer, and need those young women to know that there are other directions to take. There are always better choices than most of the ones being offered to women today, better choices than the ones I have made.

The top reason a woman finds herself in a rap video, sprawled undressed over a luxury car while a rapper is saying lewd things about her, is a lack of self-esteem. I know it sounds like a clich, but no one who values, loves, or knows herself would allow herself to be placed in such a degrading position. Finding myself and learning to value who I am was one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome.

Before my video girl career, I was known in some circles as a stripper. Others knew me as Superhead, the insatiable lover of many Hollywood stars, sports figures, and some of musics most influential performers and executives. None of that is who I really am, nor does it tell the whole story.

Along my journey, there are things that I have seen and overheard which could tarnish and even demolish the reputations of some of these artists. I realized then that I had a power which had nothing to do with my body or my looks or my sexuality. I had information usually confined to members of the Good Ol Boys clubs of the industry. I had been allowed behind those doors, as a modern-day Mata Hari.

The days of MC Lyte, Yo-Yo, Sister Souljah, and Salt-n-Pepa have faded away. Our Queen, Latifah, has broken new ground in another sector, but has left her place on the throne of hip hop empty, waiting to be filled. We live in a world where the only goals at the end of the day are profit and top-ten spots on the Billboard charts. Members of the industry are being rewarded for selling the most records, destroying in the process the most beautiful thing about us as a cultureour girls and young women. It was so easy to be drawn in and dominated by it all.

Music videos occupied only a short year and a half of my life, but the picture and the purpose are much larger than that. Magazines, music videos, films, and television continuously fill the heads of young girls with visions of perfect bodies, sex, and money. Parents are often either absent or uneducated or both, rendering them largely unaware of whats going on right in their own living rooms. That little girl whose head was filled with those deceptive visions of wealth and fame is me, all grown up and ready to tell what I know.

O CTOBER 2001 . I was lying on the hard, cold floor in the bathroom of the famous Chinese bistro Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills. It is one of the most upscale and renowned restaurants in the world, yet I was at the lowest point of my life. With my head next to the toilet, I was alone, in debt, with no friends and no hope.

It had been a long, hard trip that led to this fall. It was a wild roller-coaster ride which included some of the hottest names in hip hop and Hollywood. For two years I rode it out. I was in the middle of it alldining with P. Diddy, partying with Vin Diesel, going one-on-one with Shaquille ONeal.

I had money, three cars, a condo in a prestigious neighborhood, a nanny for my son. I had starred in some of the hottest music videos with Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Ja Rule, and Ludacris. I had even costarred in the blockbuster film A Man Apart, opposite Vin Diesel. But here I lay on a cold bathroom floor, hugging the toilets frigid porcelain, completely hopeless. I was broke, homeless, and probably dying.

The last thing I remembered was my body shaking violently as I sat on the toilet with my head in my hands and my friend Eva hovering over me asking me if I was okay. But now I was on the floor and she was gone. Can I move? was the only thought swirling through my head.

I tried to say something to make sure I was alive. I couldnt. I tried to move my leg, and it worked. I stood up gingerly and made my way to the sink. I looked around the small, one-stall bathroom. It was dimly lit and tiny, yet elegant. I held on to the sink, looking at myself in the mirror. My pupils were fully dilated, and I could feel my knees wobbling beneath me. I splashed cold water on my face, hoping to snap out of the trouble I was so obviously in.

I looked at my jewelry and clothes. I still wore the diamond-heart pendant and the canary yellow diamond earrings that my ex-husband had given me years before. My ring and bracelet were gifts purchased at Tiffany. My long nails were perfectly French-manicured, and my hair was long and black. My skin had been tanned by the Miami sun and my eyes were gray thanks to my colored contacts. My face was made up to perfection, compliments of MAC and Chanel. My jeans were a two-hundred-dollar pair by fashion icon Marc Jacobs, and the rest of the ensemble followed suit. Everything was designer-made, from my jewelry to my makeup to the clothes I woreeven the drugs Id consumed.