THE ‘SLUT’ DIARIES One A-lister’s shocking tale
Pretty much everyone has something to say about AMBER ROSE. And more often than not, the opinions aren’t complimentary. Not that she gives a shit. Here the model – whose exboyfriend Kanye West once said he needed 30 showers after dating her – explains why she’s learned to embrace the word ‘slut’
Walking down the red carpet at the MTV VMAs I felt powerful. Powerful and confident. My best friend Blac Chyna was by my side and we were dressed in outfits covered with every hate-filled word I’d ever had thrown at me – slurs like ‘hoe,’ ‘gold-digger’ and ‘slut.’
Not everyone’s idea of a confidence boost, but I wanted to get a message across: call me what you like but it won’t hurt me. And the photographers went mad for us.
I haven’t always been that way. At one time those words hurt so much I felt as though they might destroy me.
The first time I was called a ‘hoe’ was when I was 13. I’d never even had sex or kissed a boy. At school I was a tomboy and hung out with a big group of boys who I played softball with. The other girls in my year hated that and used to bully me. They would call me names like ‘whore’ and spread horrible rumours about me. According to them I was sleeping with all of my male friends, which wasn’t true. I used to try to defend myself but often that
meant getting into a physical fight.
Named and shamed
Sadly, that was the deal in the Philadelphia neighbourhood where I grew up – sometimes you just had to fight things out. Or worse. There was one time when it got a lot more serious. Four girls and a boy from the year above, who’d been calling me names at school, jumped me in the street. It was so scary. I was very bruised and my hair started falling out where they’d pulled it. I couldn’t let them win though, so I just had to shake it off and carry on. When I was 15 I got the opportunity to move away from that school. My parents Dorothy and Michael divorced when I was six, and I went to live with my father in Colorado for a year. I joined a new school and felt hopeful about my new start. At first I was popular with the other kids. I worked in an expensive clothes shop and the owners gave me the latest Guess and Iceberg jeans, which helped me fit in. I also started developing and getting prettier, which actually turned out to be a curse. Girls started messing with me. There was one occasion that haunted me for years. I had skived off school with some kids from my year and we were at someone’s house playing a game called Seven Minutes In Heaven. The point is to hide in a cupboard with someone and make out with them until the time is up. When it was my turn I went into the cupboard with a boy I didn’t know particularly well.
It was pitch black and he kept telling me to get down on my knees. I was so young and naive, I really didn’t understand what was going on. He kept saying, “Just do it!”
Eventually I knelt down, but to my horror he opened the door and that’s when I realised he had his penis out. Everyone in the room started shouting, “She’s sucking his dick!”
Horror flooded through me. I hadn’t been doing anything but he had made sure it looked like I had. School was terrible after that and I was tormented endlessly.
If I walked into the canteen at lunch, everyone would turn to look at me, and people would whisper about me in the corridor. But what hurt the most was when the other kids started to move out of my way like I was gross. It became unbearable and I begged my parents to let me leave the school and move back to Philadelphia. Thankfully Mum agreed. It was nowhere near as good a school but I was just grateful for a fresh beginning. The years of abuse had scarred me deeply though.
Finding a sisterhood
When I left school I started working as an exotic dancer. That’s just the way it was in my neighbourhood – you were either a drug dealer or a stripper. It had absolutely nothing to do with boosting my confidence – I did it purely for the money. I’d seen other girls in my neighbourhood become dancers and they drove expensive cars and wore designer clothes, and I wanted that, too. Funnily enough, it turned out to be one of the best periods of my life.
When you tell someone you’re a dancer they immediately assume you’re a prostitute, and sleeping with all the customers. But, hand on heart, it wasn’t like that. It was a sisterhood and we were all friends. Most of the girls were in college or just trying to take care of their families. I danced for two years but my real dream was to become a professional model – I just needed to work out how. I’d call up modelling agencies, asking to meet with them, but I got knockback after knock-back. But I didn’t give up and in 2008 I got my big break when a woman in New York spotted me in the street. She worked for Def Jam and told me she thought I’d be great in music videos. I started getting jobs and got to work with the likes of Ludacris and Nicki Minaj. It was amazing.
When I was on a job I made sure I spoke to absolutely everybody and never looked down at anyone. I made brilliant contacts and in 2009 I was finally signed by Ford Models. It felt great to prove people wrong.
Double standards
But when I started to get famous, the name-calling started again. My look made me stand out – I had a shaved head, was curvaceous and wore provocative clothing [Amber also dated Kanye West from 2008 to 2010, which raised her profile].
I never wanted to be famous, only to be a professional model and do things I felt proud of and that made me happy. But suddenly my name was being bandied about in the press and on social media – often not in a nice way. The negativity was unreal and
“The first time I was called a ‘hoe’ was when I was 13. I’d never even had sex or kissed a boy. At school I was a tomboy”
horrible rumours about me circulated online. I’ve lost track of all the men I was linked to, most of whom I’d never met – rappers, basketball players, footballers, even fans who had just asked for a picture with me in a club. I’d agree to a photo and the next day it would be all over the internet, with a story about me and some total stranger.
It was out of control and I was constantly defending myself on social media. It felt all too familiar – people were picking on me again for stuff I hadn’t done. I felt like the world was against me.
Things got better when I married my ex-husband, rapper Wiz Khalifa, in 2013. We have a three-year-old son, Sebastian, who is my world. Things didn’t work out with Wiz and we split in 2015, but he’s still one of my biggest supporters. As soon as we broke up I started getting abuse again. We were both single but while he got praise for going on dates with new women, I was made out to be a whore for being seen with other men. It’s so ridiculous that men still get praised for it while our reputations are trashed for doing the very same thing.
Walking the walk
It was around this time that things began to change for me. Rather than feel hurt by the names people called me, I started to feel angry. I realised people were going to talk shit about me whatever happened. For years I’d let it affect my life – to the point where I’d been too scared to kiss a boy or lose my virginity in my teens for fear of what people might say. I didn’t want other young, vulnerable girls to start life like I did. So two years ago I decided to embrace it. I started referring to myself as a slut and it was life-changing. If I called myself that then nobody could hurt me ever again. The term stopped bothering me and I realised they were just words. Terms of abuse that men and women use to make someone feel ashamed and bad about themselves.
I wanted to do something useful with my experience, so last year I started my annual Amber Rose SlutWalk Festival in LA to raise awareness. It was amazing. My friends all flew in from Philadelphia and we had such a mixture of women from all walks of life – porn stars, Black Panther feminists, lesbian feminists… They all want the same goal: equality.
I also invited men along because they have mothers, sisters, daughters… Last month was the second one. There’s still a lot of work to do though.
In February I was a guest on TV show It’s
Not You, It’s Men. When I revealed to the hosts Rev Run and Tyrese that people think they can come up and touch my body in the street, they suggested it was because of the way I present myself. It really pissed me off. What made me sad was that the audience was full of women who agreed with them.
But I don’t like to get mad at people in those situations – they’re clearly just uneducated. So I hit them with facts and let them know they were wrong and it went viral.
Arise Queen Slut
What’s crazy is that I’ve become the Queen Slut, so whenever someone famous gets slut-shamed, I’m the one they call for advice. I’ve set up a company called MUVA Management [slang for mother and what Amber’s fans call her], so I can help people going through the same thing.
Just this week a woman in the public eye contacted me. Her manager was trying it on with her, he wasn’t taking no for an answer and had threatened to publish horrible pictures of her online. I got my lawyers on the phone and we sorted it out.
I still find it ironic that people assume I’m a promiscuous woman and think I’m incapable of love. I’ve never been into casual. And now I don’t even have time to date because I’ve got my son and my career, and my priority is pushing this cause.
We need to reclaim that word. It’s just another form of bullying, so why should we feel ashamed? These days I can’t get enough of the word ‘slut.’ I even get it written on my latte at Starbucks every morning.
“I started referring to myself as a slut. If I called myself that then nobody could hurt me ever again”