The Secret Life of a Video Vixen

To understand what made Karrine Steffans subversive, you have to understand what the accepted rules were for Video Vixens. The overarching one was “don’t fraternize with the artists.” It was self-imposed. Steffans says the majority of girls on video shoots were “reserved” and “there strictly to do their jobs.” Steffans was not; she was there to get noticed. One time, she popped off her top and sunbathed with exposed breasts to get director Dave Myers’ attention. It worked. She says whatever the other girls wouldn’t do, she would. Whatever they wouldn’t wear, she’d wear. You have to remember the shoots themselves weren’t the endgame for her. She was making $1,500 a day at first, and though her rate nearly double after she appeared in the “Danger” video, it was still small compared to her lifestyle. She wanted to break down the boundaries between her and the artists to find more people willing to financially support her lifestyle. Steffans was more socialite than Video Vixen, and in the end that paid off for her monetarily. Maybe she was part of a new paradigm.

Steffans traces much of her career and life trajectory to her lack of self-esteem. She says “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.” She didn’t understand what gave her person value, something she regards as perhaps the biggest hurdle she had to overcome in her personal journey. If we think of the objectification and sexualization in the music industry shifting away from "the Video Vixen" and towards “reality stars,” or towards artists themselves (in some cases one in the same), this is something we have to consider. It gets into similar territory to what Sinéad O’Connor examined in her open letter to Miley Cyrus, and is something that’s made all the more troubling by our intimate knowledge of celebrities’ private lives.

It becomes clear throughout the pages of Steffans' book that the one thing she was really chasing in the bedrooms of all those famous men was a family. She and her mother nursed a mutual hatred of each other, pretty much from the time she was born. She hated that her mother bathed herself in perfume and wore tight-fitting clothes, and that her mother always ran around town with somebody else’s man on her arm. It’s a cruel twist of fate that in familial relationships we often end up emulating what we so despise, and Steffans exhibited similar antics when she grew up.

But it has to be stressed that her mother also physically and emotionally abused her, beating her viciously and hardly letting her go out of the house. One time Steffans' mother, who was a seamstress, purposefully made young Steffans an ugly dress to wear so that people wouldn’t look at her, and told her as much to her face. After Steffans was horrifically raped, her mother never asked what had happened. Instead she beat her and called her insulting names. This, at least in part, led Steffans to tolerate physically and emotionally abusive behavior from men throughout her life. This is how you mold low self-esteem.

As we saw with DMX’s riveting autobiography, this type of intense abuse can cause a child to withdraw into a fantasy world. Steffans read a lot—usually mysteries from the likes of Agatha Christie, who would take her to another world. She could run back to her room between meals and chores and forget where she was, forget that her family hated her. She also read a lot of poetry, including Edgar Allan Poe and Maya Angelou. When she ran away from home at age 16, one of the only things she packed was a treasured Wu-Tang Clan tape, which served as the soundtrack to her first “voluntary freedom.” She ended up stripping using a fake ID and going under the name Yizette Santiago. Her path towards becoming a Video Vixen had begun.

Steffans became introduced to the rap industry through her (illegal) marriage to Kool G Rap, one of hip-hop’s early pioneers. She met him at a strip club and said he was unattractive but charming and funny, and made her feel protected. Their relationship quickly turned sour, and he began to physically abuse her, even after she had given birth to their son. It was so bad that even one of his ex-girlfriends, who was insanely jealous of Steffans, would cry at the sight of Steffans’ bruises when she came over.

Eventually Steffans started to get lost in the “new world of hip-hop and the glorious videos accompanying the latest hot singles.” She envied the voluptuous women and considered her body to be “gaunt and disgusting” compared to them. It was her greatest wish to be beautiful, strong, and free, and that is what she saw in Video Vixens. The irony remains that even when she made herself beautiful and became a part of that world, for the longest time she still wasn’t free, since she became shackled to a drug-addicted life and monetarily reliant on famous men.

So far in her story, no one seems to have given Steffans even a hint of break, but that all changed when she met Ice-T. Ice-T was the first one to extend a helping hand to her, giving her the money and support that would allow her to move to Los Angeles. He was the only person who wasn’t tearing her down. Of course, as with most things in her book, there is a darker side. He was still essentially her sugar daddy, exchanging support, money, and connections for sex. He sets her up in a two-bedroom condo as if she were some courtesan of old. In the end, however, he was always a complete gentleman. Their relationship was honest, and when he ended it he said gently, “I have to let you go.” Even in the crass world of swapping sex for material goods, there is a clear moral spectrum.

This book can get incredibly depressing and call into question the very core of how the music industry functions, but there are still moments that are just too goofy not to laugh at. One of these is when Steffans describes power as oozing from Fred Durst’s pores. Okay. Another is when Fred Durst tells her, “make me cum and I’ll marry you.” Okay again. In fact, most of them have to do with Fred Durst being as ridiculous as you always thought he was, and yet Steffans being totally charmed by it. I guess that’s why we all loved Limp Bizkit... I mean, what?

A sadly telling part of this book is the origin of the name "Superhead," which made Steffans infamous. One time, was she was with Ja Rule (we call him Ja), and began singing a verse from Jadakiss that included the line, “Got a chick named Super-head/She give super head.” They laughed and it became a personal pet name between them. It was also something that made her feel like she belonged in the Murder Inc. family. But unfortunately, the name turned from a pet name into a “scarlet letter” that follows her around to this day.

“I became a hustler of sorts—bouncing in and out of strip clubs and selling myself in every way. I had gotten to a very desperate point where I could only have sex if it was accompanied by perks. I expected and received money from every man in my life, especially celebrities. I used sex to keep them happy, and when they were happy, they were generous.”

“That was the high. It was like I was good enough and worthy enough to be with someone so adored—yet another lie.”

Ray J seems to be the one man during this entire period that Steffans truly loved. He was a few years younger than her and made her feel young again—something she hadn’t ever really been allowed to be. They didn't have drug-fueled orgies around town; instead, they watched Big Momma's House three or four times, and who doesn’t love that? The sad part is that because of this, because of her lifestyle which she kept hidden from him, Ray (as we call him) was never more than a memory, even when they were together. It was a glimpse perhaps of something that could have been without her lifestyle, without the other men and the drugs. But would she have ever met him without those?

Murder Inc., and especially Irv Gotti, represented in many ways the other end of the spectrum from Ray J. Gotti knew everything about Steffans, knew about her relationship with Ja Rule, and about all the other men. The first time they hooked up (if you can even call it that) was when Gotti essentially blackmailed her into giving him head so as not to kick her out of a video shoot. He then offered her to man after man of his acquaintances in the most cold-blooded way possible.

There is a harrowing scene of him negotiating with Diddy as to whether or not to send Steffans to him for sex. Steffans talks about a rivalry between her and another of Gotti’s women saying, “We were both smart women who deserved so much mother than feuding about who stayed on a video shoot and who got priority in Gotti’s bed." And yet, there they were. Perhaps then one of the lessons of Video Vixens is that they are in some ways a product of the opportunities afforded them, for whatever reason, or lack thereof.

In the end, of course, we come back to family. This is what started the entire discussion, what Steffans was searching for, what she believes many other women who choose to prance around in music videos are searching for, that acceptance that should have come from their family.

“One thing had become clear to me. The people I considered my friends, and even my family, were nothing of the sort. Over the past few years, I had done what was asked of me in order to keep the men in my life happy, in hopes that they would always accept me and want me around. I was the life of the party and the ultimate party favor and showpiece, but now I was a person with issues. When I had a problem I was no longer the carefree addict they had all come to know, they didn’t want me around. They began to change. The same men who gave me thousands of dollars for shopping sprees and fantasy sex-capades were now donating maybe two or three hundred dollars to help me in my plight. I was getting less money in my time of need than I was when I was when I was everyone’s favorite whore.”

The conundrum of Karrine Steffans is neatly encapsulated in the her book by the character of Damon Dash. Damon Dash is the first one to recognize that her story “means something,” but what does that actually entail? The first time she meets Dash, he’s falling over drunk off vodka at a video shoot. The next time he’s mentioned is as the entity that facilitated her book deal, cementing a new chapter in her life. What did Dash see in Steffans’ story? Was it the allure of the cold cash, the celebrity names that spilled out of her onto the page? Or was it her hardship, her warning tale of drug addiction and abuse?

In the end, of course, it’s all of these. And this is the hard truth every reader of Steffans’ autobiography has to face: there is an element of genuine struggle in her story, but it’s belied by an obsessive want for fame of the reality TV kind. She says at the end of Confessions of a Video Vixen that she’s content with her normal life, but then publishes an ebook (not even an actual dead-tree book) in February 2013 detailing her relationship with Lil Wayne. She shows us the blurring of the line between Video Vixen and reality star more intensely than any other figure, and exposes what parts of the grime of the industry makes us as cultural consumers most uncomfortable. If you want to read the whole story, you can buy her book here.

Sunday Book Review is a recurring feature devoted to bridging the gap between music fans and music books. We aim to give you a taste of new and classic books that dive deep into the psyches of musicians. Tweet requests @nmcalone.