Guest Author - Khara Aisha

Honestly, I had no idea who she was. I don’t pay enough attention to music videos to remember any specific “video girl.” I remember when the book was published, and I remember all the hype and supposed scandal, but even then I wasn’t very curious. Besides, I don’t care whether some famous rap star is about to “outed” for scandalous behavior.

But here is what got me -- a quote about how unforgivable and unprecedented Karrine Steffans' actions really are, and not because she was a stripper, or a drug addict, or a bad mother. Unforgivable because she violated the hip-hop “omerta.” "Omerta," as I understand it, is mafia-speak for "code of silence."

What? There’s a hip-hop omerta? And that’s her crime?

I still was not curious enough to actually buy the book. But when I saw it on my best friend’s desk, I was compelled to borrow it. I read it on a short plane ride, and now I have a confession. Confessions of Video Vixen wasn’t that bad.

What does she confess? Here is a summary: She grew up wanting to be famous and fabulous. She always wanted to be with the “in” crowd. She achieved her goals using sex. But perhaps this was to be expected, considering her past. Karrine’s mother never loved her, so she grew up without self confidence or acceptance. Her father was never there, so she was always looking for a male figure in her life. She was raped when she was thirteen, and her mother expressed no concern for her, only disgust. She began drinking and smoking at an early age. Desperate to escape her mother’s abuse, she ran away from home and lived on the streets as a teenager. The men in her life used her. Her first husband, Kool G Rap, physically and verbally abused her. She never managed to have many female friends. She seems to have slept with every famous athlete, singer or rapper that you could name, beginning even before she began to star in music videos.

Not shocking, and not likely to win any literary awards. But more importantly, Karrine Steffans had a reason to write: she wants to warn other young women that her life was not all that it seemed. She realizes now that she was wrong, immature, misguided. She states in her introduction, “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. . . . There are always better choices than most of the ones being offered to women today, better choices than the ones I have made.”

It is this statement in the introduction that I liked the most. I know many young women that need to be warned. The young girls in my own family don’t want to be doctors or lawyers; they’d rather have designer bags and meet raps starts, literacy be damned.

At the same time, Steffans’ “don’t follow in my footsteps” warning does not exactly smack you over the head as you read. For the most part, Confessions reads as an adventurous tale with a few stumbles along the way. I certainly felt sorry for her, but I am not sure her tale would register as a warning to the budding video girls of America. Maybe I’m being cynical? Maybe. But the cover of the book, with Steffans’ boobs prominently displayed, her body draped sexily over a chair, or gazing sexily with her hands positioned as if she . . . . in short, the cover sells “sex,” not wisdom. I can’t help but to think that she could issue a much more effective warning if she had gone on Oprah and The Tyra Banks Show.