Confessions of a Video Vixen: My Autocritography of Sexuality, Desire, and Memory

Abstract

The video vixen holds a special place in American society's underbelly. Good hair, firm breasts, round ass, slim waist, and pouty mouth, she is beautiful according to European and African American standards. She personifies sex. After seeing Case serenade and propose to Beyoncé in his music video “Happily Ever After,” I wanted to be the video vixen. I wanted my desirability memorialized in a video. Nelly was my chance, or so I thought. In this autocritography, I use performative writing to confess my short-lived career as a video vixen. My intention is to trouble boundaries of gender and sexuality by telling and re-telling my experience on the set of Nelly's “Country Grammar (Hot Shit)” music video shoot alongside my anthem at the time, Jay-Z and Pharell's “I Just Wanna Love You (Give It 2 Me).” I illuminate how bodies move between and beyond boundaries established by language due to the intersectional properties of our experiences, counter-memory, and re-membering.

Keywords:

• Intersectionality
• Sexuality
• Video vixen
• Memory
• Autocritography

She would like to thank the gracious reviewers for their wonderful comments as she revised the essay, and specifically, Kimberlee Pérez for her support, encouragement, and wonderful suggestions. She would also like to thank Toniesha Taylor and Jennifer Erdely for being readers of the earlier manuscript and supporting its development.

She would like to thank the gracious reviewers for their wonderful comments as she revised the essay, and specifically, Kimberlee Pérez for her support, encouragement, and wonderful suggestions. She would also like to thank Toniesha Taylor and Jennifer Erdely for being readers of the earlier manuscript and supporting its development.

Notes

[1] The title for this text was inspired by two entities, the title of Karrine Steffans's book about being a professional video model, as well as Bryant Keith Alexander's notion of confessional tale as scholarly inquiry.

[2] I changed the names of both models to ensure anonymity.

[3] Selling.

[4] I channel Gloria Anzaldúa and her work on history, body, and mestiza identity when I write completá and of the body as a nucleus.