Actress, singer, and former Miss America Vanessa Williams has spoken out about being molested by an 18-year-old girl when she was only ten-years-old and how it’s had a negative impact on her psychologically. Vanessa Williams recently talked about a traumatic summer before she entered the fifth grade when a much older “cool girl” performed oral sex on her when she was staying with her friend’s family's friends in California. Even though Williams thought that her family friend’s daughter was cool at first she knew that what happened between them “wasn't supposed to be happening.” She was one of the cool girls, said Williams: “She made you want to feel like you were a grown-up.” Williams says that the incident sexualized her at an inappropriately early age and that in a way it took away some of her innocence: “Had that not happened in my life and had I had an opportunity to have a normal courtship with a boyfriend at 16 or whatever... there wouldn't have been that shame that was always haunting me. It made me more sexually promiscuous and more sexually curious at a younger age than I should have been.”
Author’s note: In 1984, the publication of naked photos featuring then Miss America Vanessa Williams was a seminal moment for any boy who grew up during the 80s. The photos were published in Penthouse (spanning over two issues), and featured Williams with another woman. Taken in 1982, when she was only 19 years old, they were rather graphic for the time. Somehow, through older brothers, or even fathers, or just stolen off the racks, the magazine got into the hands of almost every American boy. A pornographic pictorial would not make such a huge cultural impact until the semi-nude Vanna White Playboy appearance in 1987. (The Penthouse covers with George Burns, in hindsight, were incredibly creepy; as if Williams wasn’t in pornography, but merely co-starring in some light movie comedy.)
As was the case with both of these women, but probably more so with Williams, their layouts in porn marked a violent stripping away of innocence; not only for them, but, also for the viewer. This is primarily on account of the national symbolism often associated with Miss America: young, beautiful, and pure. For, the Williams Penthouse edition was like the over-played Don McLean song coming true: “…bye, bye Miss American Pie…” For a kid, those pictures were unavoidably erotic, but also sickeningly tragic. I recall not getting that turned on by them. They were like crime-scene photos: dark, artificial, and uncomfortably staged. And, then, there was the lesbianism. For most, it was our first glimpse at homosexuality. It left us uneasy and confused. Was this okay? Now, all these years later, it’s interesting to know the truth behind those images. Like Williams, as with many of us who got into porn, you often end-up reenacting the childhood abuse; it’s a bizarre way of trying to make the trauma seem bearable by performing it, and getting congratulated for doing so, in front of the public.