She did not receive a call to be in the video and she was not pressured by her casting agency to perform in the video, she was willing to audition 2. Once Johnson ceases to tell the story of this music video, she begins to analyze how she has told the story and positioned herself in the video industry and admits to her readers that she has told two lies that change the story completely: 1. Once the music video shoot was over, Johnson claims that she went home ashamed that she put herself in that situation, angry because she felt like she was treated like a second-class citizen, violent towards all the men who had harassed her, and she felt pity for the women who were fine with living in and contributing to this culture (Johnson 192). As Johnson continues telling her story, she recounts being brought into a sea of other girls and random men who spew sexually explicit comments at her, causing herself to attempt to shift to the back of the crowd and being out of direct view of the camera as she “did not want to be the hypersexual hoe dancing for money on the top of a low-rider” (Johnson 188). Johnson was cast as one of three principal models for the Country Grammar video by Nelly and, because of her terrified look after seeing the other two models in their bikini tops and short shorts, was featured as a more modest portion of the video, donning black capri pants and a black halter-top (Johnson 185). In her recollection, Johnson claims that her agency, Centro Models, sent her on a job to be in a music video for a local celebrity and although she did not want to be featured in the video she knew there was pressure from her agency for her to do it or possible not be offered another job in the future (Johnson 184). In this story, Johnson begins her career as a video vixen in the Spring of 2000 as she was in undergraduate school studying Communications in St.
Johnson tells her video vixen story in an article entitled “Confessions of a Video Vixen: My Autocritography of Sexuality, Desire, and Memory,” in which she develops a timeline of her initial introduction to the hip hop music video industry.
Amber Johnson, now professor at Prairie View A&M University, is an interesting example of a video vixen who has chronicled her process of becoming a vixen while also writing about what her days as a video vixen meant for her sexuality, empowerment, and position as a black women in society.