Video vixens (1986- ) are those half-naked women you see dancing in American music videos. They are also called video girls, video hoes, hip hop models and hip hop honeys. Most are black. They appear especially in hip hop and reggaeton videos – not so much in rock, R & B or country. You see them in swimsuit calendars and in magazines aimed at young black men, like King and Smooth. They are the pin-up girls of our time.
Some of the better known ones are Melyssa Ford, Esther Baxter, Vida Guerra, Buffie the Body, Ki Toy Johnson, Angel Lola Luv, Lizz Robbins, Hoopz and Bria Myles.
But the most famous of all is Karrine “Superhead” Steffans. She did not appear in many videos but she wrote a kiss-and-tell book, “Confessions of a Video Vixen” (2005).
Melyssa Ford says some video girls are loose like Steffans but most are not. They are hard-working and have more self-respect than that.
Video vixens started with Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” (1986), a rock song. They were brought into hip hop by 2 Live Crew with “Me So Horny” (1989), but did not catch on in a big way till about 2000, the year that gave us the “Thong Song” and Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin'”.
A video vixen’s body is all wrong to be a fashion model. Instead of a tall, thin, coat hanger body, she is round in all the places men like (well, at least most straight black men). She is not there to show off clothes but to appeal to men.
Some video girls become actresses but it is hard to make the jump. Hollywood gets its idea of beauty from the fashion industry. So they wind up acting in parts like “Hoochie Mama” and “Woman in Bed”.
To a degree, though, video vixens are helping to broaden ideas of female beauty. A good thing in a country where girls die from trying to get thin.
But at the same time they give many people the wrong idea about black women. Many think they are more or less true to life when they are anything but.
Video vixens are paid to act out a male dream of the world. In the world we live in life is not like that, women are not like that. No, not even black women.
Esther Baxter said the videos are like a Laffy Taffy ad where people’s heads become huge (she is thinking of Airheads). She says parents need to ground their children in the truth and not leave it to television and its dancing girls to bring them up.
Much of the anger against video vixens comes from Christians and feminists. They say women should be shown not as objects of male desire, but as having inner worth and dignity.
And it is only getting worse. Melyssa Ford: “Now it’s about body parts and how well you can shake them. It’s not about the female. It’s not about appreciating the female.” A line has been crossed.
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Vida got one of the best bodies out there, but a face of a dog. She is about a 7.5 on the scaale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest)
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I’m not saying this because she’s not black. But its true. Vida does have a great body (hope its real) but her face is……is…….not pretty to me either. I give her, on a scale of 1 to 10, 6.5.
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I think Vida Guerra’s body is real, or mostly real: modelling for a long time was just something she did on the side.
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Her body is banging, no doubt.
But I think you are being very harsh face wise. She is cute and I would consider myself lucky to find someone who looks exactly like her.
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Same here.
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Guerra isn’t ugly but she’s just nothing special, facially.
Her body is great but still …she doesn’t nothing for me, personally.
Neither do most of the women who presented as “desirable” by the media.
I like real women. Not ones who’ve been airbrushed and retouched by a computer. I guess all my experience in photography/television makes me cynical of these people. There’s just too many tricks to make these people look different.
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I see where you coming from. It’s all good!
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mynameismyname: I think I know what you mean: with just the little bit of Photoshop that I know, it has destroyed the effect for me of some pictures of women.
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That Vida Guerra isn’t Black, I think she’s ugly and fat. Blog owner, sometimes you are very confusing and contradictory. I respect you and thank you for showing such interest in Black women, but it would be nice to not have to constantly here about/see women of other races. They have enough people talking about and mooning over them all the time. Black women have nothing.
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je vous un video pour femme black
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where you say women are dying to be thin you also have women dying trying to look like the models in the hip hop videos. it’s just as bad as what the media is doing but i guess because those have big booties, it’s not an issue.
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Video vixens are a disgrace. It’s like being a stripper.
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@Dee: some video vixens are porn stars, by the way of being a Stripper?
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As a rational black man, I think you have to keep things in perspective. Video Vixens are a personification of a male fantasy and should be seen as such. I don’t view these “models” as any more “real” than a swimsuit model in ‘Sports Illustrated’ or a covergirl for ‘Cosmopolitan’.
Anyone who looks at these videos and actually assumes that all black women “act” like this or should be treated like this, is too immature to be with a “real” woman, let alone a black woman.
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