Call of the Wild
a Confession is only repentant the first time around
2007-09-28
By Terry Glover

When Confessions of a Video Vixen hit the streets two years ago, it was the shot heard ‘round the world of hip-hop, more damaging than any .45. Would its victims survive? Not only would they survive, they would continue to thrive, but none more surprisingly than the author herself, Karrine Steffans. Filled with salacious, if sketchy, accounts of  numerous celebrity liaisons, Confessions echoed earlier kiss-and-tell tomes from groupies like rocker Pamela DeBarres (I’m With the Band) who had become icons due, in part, to the sheer volume of their conquests.

And, while we are used to the soul barring details of mainstream gossip, Black celebrities had, for the most part, managed to keep what happened in Vegas (and New York and Cali and Tokyo) in loco delecti. With the publication of Confessions, Steffans flipped the script and made a name for herself, even if it was one that very publicly touted her private skills. After a whirlwind publicity tour for the book, V-squared started turning up on conference panels, talk shows and at awards galas as…what? Writer? Entrepreneur? Easy Date? Whatever, the magic happened and Steffans now bills herself as a New York Times best-selling author with her own imprint.

Steffans rationale for writing Confessions has always been that she wanted it to serve as a cautionary tale for young women seeking the glam life of the entertainment industry; wanted them to know about the pain and humiliation lurking just on the other side of the velvet ropes. By naming names, she said, she was exposing the music industry (her primary target) for what it was.

Apparently, Steffans is a real voyeur: She’s back with her newly released follow-up, Vixen Diaries, part two of the tales of her racy past. The publishers promise “more shocking gossip, juice and drama,” in the tell-some-more title, but the book serves more as a sad testament to Steffans’ addiction to the shine, even at the expense of her “now legitimate” reputation. In Diaries we don’t learn much more than we did the first time around: that one icon had her do unspeakable things to him – things she “didn’t have the stomach to describe,” in the book, but certainly had the stomach to execute. We also learn that she has groupies, past lovers looking to cash in on her, uh, fame. She mocks the dated, dusty slang of Teddy Pendergrass, points out the obvious in Flava Flav “one of the most unattractive men on Earth,” and relishes the freedom of relieving herself in the shadows of a gas station parking lot.

Young women will, no doubt, be curious about Steffans’ further exploits. The lifestyle she did and still does lead holds a certain appeal for young women brought up within the gin-n-juice culture exalted by countless music videos. But the women seduced by the experiences Steffans recounts are almost certainly young women lacking in education, options and, most surely, self-esteem. Nothing glamorous in that. And, while it is a cautionary tale, indeed, the real caution to those vixens-in-training is to avoid the kind of self-delusion that Steffans claims to have left behind in her difficult upbringing, but that she clearly suffers from even now. Her repeated claims of “intimacy, closeness and bonding” with every man she’s been with strains the bounds of sanity, or, at the very least, awareness.  Ditto the casting of her elevated status among the rap moguls and celebrities with whom she now claims to be on equal footing.

At a time when the debate rages on about respect for women and women’s respect for themselves; about role models and independence, Steffan’s Diaries takes aim at any advances women are striving to make. And she shoots to kill.

Terry Glover is Senior Editor at Ebonyjet.com. She writes about current trends and pop culture.