'Vixen Icon,' by Buffie Carruth, better known as "Buffie the Body," starts out with the author's description of life in high school when her booty was, well, less plenteous.

"I often got depressed because I wasn't thick,'' Carruth writes. "All my life through school, I've noticed that girls had to be cute and pretty, or you had to be fine as hell with some ass and hips to be an 'in' girl. Even if you didn't have big breasts, it was cool as long as you had some ass. I didn't have any breasts, no a--, and no hips and that s--- made me feel so insecure. I looked like a damn boy!''

Not anymore.



In her memoir, Carruth details how a visit to a mysterious "Dr. X," 25 miles from her home, gave her the magic formula to help her gain weight and a voluptuous backside, earning her the name Buffie the Body. She explains that Dr. X gave her a list of foods, including peanut butter and pasta, along with a prescription for an unnamed liquid appetite stimulant. While she was hopeful, she says, she was not convinced it would work. She filled the prescription and followed the doctor's orders.

"Believe it or not, in less than two weeks, I had already started noticing a weight gain!'' she writes. "My a--, hips and thighs were the first parts of my body to receive this blessing. I noticed a little weight gain in my stomach area, too, but not enough to get alarmed by. It was like my a-- and thighs just took off and left the rest of my body. My body started changing so fast that it seemed like it happened overnight. Everyone was noticing it too -- and I mean everybody!"

Carruth burst onto the scene several years ago with an appearance in rapper Tony Yayo's video, 'So Seductive,' becoming a household name among hip-hop entertainers and fans. As she puts it, she came a long way from "fighting, dating drug dealers, stealing, stripping and... tricking." She used to carry a baseball bat in the trunk of her car in case trouble called.

Carruth is one of seven children, including a younger sister who died of ovarian cancer and to whom the book is dedicated. She grew up in Athens, Ga., and her real name is Buffie, based on a character from her mom's favorite television show, 'Family Affair.'

The problem with 'Video Icon' is that Carruth breaks little ground on the life of a video vixen that hasn't already been broken by Karrine Steffan's seminal account in 'Confessions of a Video Vixen.' And unlike Carmen Bryan's memoir, 'It's No Secret: From Nas to Jay-Z, from Seduction to Scandal,' Carruth does not name A-list celebrities in her sexual exploits.

The story is written in a fairly pedestrian fashion. It also has some inconsistencies. Carruth, for example, writes about other women hating on her for competitive reasons, but it appears she has beef with Steffans. "I'm not a fan of Karrine's, but I don't feel any particular way about her. She made those choices, and she lived that life. I don't think it affected me directly. America as a whole has never looked at video girls in a positive light. It's not Karrine's fault. It's all our faults, as a whole. ...Yes, I do agree that Karrine played her part in making it worse, especially by claiming she fell victim to the vicious Hollywood scene and then capitalizing off of her story, but the damage is done, and I don't even know how the image of a video girl will ever be repaired.''

Still, unlike the Hottentot Venus, who in the 1800s was forced to gyrate her ample buttocks as part of an exhibition around Britain, Carruth has made a choice.

"Yes, I admit that my a-- was my main reason behind my success, but everyone can't expect it to happen as easily for them as it was for me,'' she writes. "I was one in a million at the time.