*Another 2009 piece that’s still relevant today after all, no matter where you go, there you are.*

Depending on who you ask, Karrine Steffans is one of the following: an enterprising video-vixen turned author who’s overcome her well-documented, glorified groupie past, or a damaged, dysfunctional woman who’s still, on many levels, enslaved to it. In my opinion, she’s both.

For those of you who are asking, “just who the hell is Karrine Steffans?” here’s a quick refresher. At the age of 31, Ms. Steffans is now a best-selling author of two torrid-tell-alls, 2005’s Confessions of a Video Vixen and 2007’s The Vixen Diaries, both of them detailing how a childhood riddled with neglect, abuse and molestation drove her to alcohol, drugs, and into the beds (and home videos) of many athletes and entertainers (Usher, Jay-Z, Shaquille O’Neal, Lil Wayne and P. Diddy, to name a few). Thanks to the sordid skills she cultivated there, Ms. Steffans earned condominiums, cash, celebrity status and street cred, but also a notorious nickname—“Superhead.”

In case you’re wondering, that adjective isn’t complimenting her hairstyling prowess. However, even in our enlightened times, the archaic double standard about male/female sexuality still prevails, and oral sex skills are hardly what most women want to post on a resume, much less become defined by, so it’s understandable that Ms. Steffans wants to leave that part of her past behind (no pun intended) and be seen as a legitimate writer and relationship expert. Who can blame her?

I can, if part of her game plan is insulting our intelligence while attempting to earn a profit in the process. To illustrate my point, if you will, peep the included link: to publicize her newly-released third book, The Vixen Manual: How to Find, Seduce, & Keep the Man You Want, Ms. Steffans appears via satellite with a pair of TV anchors from a CW affiliate during a recent broadcast of “Good Morning Sacramento” and, instead of welcoming the opportunity to enlighten the masses, she becomes offended by their mentioning her less-than-pristine background at the top of the chat as they question her credentials and frankly, her motivation in writing the book to begin with.

The nerve! What on God’s green Earth would make them do such a thing? Come on, every single woman who’s looking for a committed partner wants to take advice from Karrine “Superhead” Steffans, right? I mean, the fact that she’s slept with countless husbands, freaked her way across the Internet and once abandoned her son makes her a wonderful role model, doesn’t it? If she can’t show us the way, then who can?

I know, I know, we’ve all made youthful mistakes. We’ve all broken hearts, broken promises and sometimes, broken spirits in our wake. Honestly, more than anything, Ms. Steffans is a product of her warped environment, learning from an early age that what was between her legs, rather than what was between her ears, would take her places in life and get her anything, or any man, she wanted. Sex, in her world, always meant power, so why not flip the punany for profit? It is society’s oldest profession, is it not?

And to be honest, that’s not even my problem with Steffans. What disgusts me is her trying to pretend that her polluted past never took place, all the while exploiting the knowledge and the ‘perks,’ if you can call them that, she extracted from her tawdry way of life. Thanks to her duplicity and defensiveness, the interview is cut and Ms. Steffans is dismissed by one of the anchors as a “rump-shaker in a bunch of videos.” I can’t deny that, as an African-American woman well acquainted with our hypersexualized image in society, the remark offended me for a moment, until I realized that a decade ago she was rump shaker.

And until she fully acknowledges and accepts that truth, Ms. Steffans will never gain the respect that she so desperately desires. After all, no matter how neatly she packages things, in the end, we all know better. Karrine Steffans was never a carpooling soccer mom who dreamed up the details of Confessions while watching re-runs of HBO’s Sex and the City. She was, and in many ways, still is, a misguided mistress to the stars who parcels out p*ssy power for a paycheck. In other words, it isn’t Avon you’re peddling, Ms. Steffans, it’s @$$. Sell it with a smile or find a new product to promote.