As every possible corner of the internet has surely already informed you, Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa had a very public misunderstanding on Wednesday that inspired some quickly deleted but widely shared tweets. Disappointingly, one of those tweets attempted to disparage Amber Rose by referring to her as a "stripper" who used a kid as a "trap." Though Rose ultimately tweeted her own brief but impactful thoughts on the feud, her new essay for Time adds another layer of enlightenment to the discussion surrounding the baffling persistence of slut-shaming in modern society.
"After my ex-husband Wiz Khalifa and I got a divorce, I’d go out for a date at a restaurant like any normal single human and people would say, 'Man, she’s such a ho. She’s out at restaurants with guys,'" Rose writes. "Then they would see my ex-husband with a bunch of women. They would say, 'He’s the man! That’s so cool.' So when I went on a date, I’m a whore, and when he’s piling girls in a car, he’s the man? There’s something wrong here."
Though it's unclear whether this essay was penned before or after 'Ye and Wiz's Twitter event, Rose's thoughts on the power of self-confidence in the face of systematic oppression are powerful and timeless. "What I’ve realized is that, when you care too much, you’re not living at your full potential," Rose reveals. "When you really stop caring about what people say, that’s when you really start living. It’s such an amazing feeling. It’s about loving who you are, owning who you are and knowing that it’s O.K. to live your life how you want to live it."
Read Amber Rose's full Time essay, entitled "How I Learned to Stop Caring What People Think," here.
