As one of our favorite leading ladies in Hip-Hop
videos, Buffie “The Body” Carruth has taken her natural beauty straight to the
top.
Many women might aspire to have the glowing smile, taut tummy
and ample booty that Buffie’s become famous for, but it’s not always as easy as
it seems. Fortunately, Buffie is reaching out to her fans to share the secrets
that can be passed along with regard to exercise and maintenance of a
video-ready body.
We caught up with Buffie to talk about her new
e-book, and got a little fitness advice in the process.
AllHipHop.com: Give us a little rundown on and all
of the things you’re doing with regard to health and exercise.
Buffie The Body: I get emails every single day
from females and they only ask me two questions. “Help me get in the
industry, tell me what I need to do” or, “I want a bigger booty, I
need a flatter stomach. I just had a baby, can you help me with my stomach
please?” I’ve never been the one to
exercise three or four times a week like I’m supposed to, but I do exercise – so
it’s two things I can talk about: keeping your booty firm and your stomach
flat.
I really can’t talk to you about nutrition and all
that, because I don’t eat like I’m supposed to. It’s a lot of bulls**t that I
eat that I don’t supposed to be eating, so I really don’t feel comfortable
talking to other women like “Oh girl, you can’t eat this and that”
because I’m still trying to get in that mode where I can cut down on a lot of
fried foods, sodas, Capri Suns, Milky Ways and stuff. I’m a little better now
but I still got a long road ahead of me.
So the
e-book that I wrote for my site is for women, not only aspiring models, because
women ask me the same questions. “As far as getting into the industry what
do I need to do? What photographer do I need to shoot with? Tell me how you did
it, how can I get in touch with the people at King Magazine?” So I made sure I
included everything females have asked me in the last three years, I made sure
I included it in the book.
From the photographer I shot with to who designed
my website and the first video I shot, I gave them the name of different video
directors. The phone numbers of different photographers I’ve shot with, the
emails of different makeup artists, everything a girl has asked me in the last
three years about getting in the industry.
I also got exercise tips, but the exercise tips
that I do. I always tell women “This is what I’ve done, and this is what I
do. I can’t speak for nobody else, I can only tell you what I do and what works
for me.”
“Now
I’m reaching out more to my female fans because I really see that they look to
me for different advice.”
AllHipHop.com: Are you doing the DVD as well or is
it mainly the e-book that’s your focus?
Buffie: The e-book and my exercise tips. Basically
my new website is like women-friendly now because in the past it wasn’t. Now
I’m reaching out more to my female fans because I really see that they look to
me for different advice. That’s the reason why I made the website this time
where women can go on there as well as men.
Sometimes the front of the site
deters women from going there, because I’m on there with thongs on my a**, so I
tried not to put too much of that on the front of site this time. I tried to
leave that for the members section when guys wanna see the thongs and all that.
I just released a DVD like two months ago, Still
Larger Than Life
.
AllHipHop.com: You’ve been definitely blessed to
not have to necessarily eat right to maintain a physique, but as you go into
your 30’s and 40’s your metabolism changes. Do you have it in the back of your mind
that you know you’ll have to progress into eating a little bit differently as
you get older?
Buffie: Exactly. I know for a fact, because weight
that used to normally drop off when I was in my early 20’s and could just eat
anything then run out and play, it’s not that easy now. I see now that it’s not
that easy, so I know now that I’m going to have to change the way I eat. I was
always scared to do cardio, when I did exercises I always worked on my booty
and my stomach.
I never really did any cardio because cardio burns
fat, and burning fat means you lose weight, so I was like, “Oh no, hell no
I ain’t gettin’ on no treadmill because I don’t wanna lose weight” – but
now, in order to see definition in your stomach, you gotta lose that fat first.
You gotta lose it to see the muscle, so yeah I need to lose some because like I
said, when you get older and still eating crazy you gotta start paying
attention. Luckily I eat a lot of crazy s**t where I haven’t had any health
issues – not saying that that won’t change later on down the line.
“Squats are
real good because they tone the back of your legs and the butt.”
AllHipHop.com: Can you give a key piece of advice
on lifting up your buttocks?
Buffie: The first thing I do is squats. Squats are
real good because they tone the back of your legs and the butt. But it’s a certain way you do squats, because
I don’t do it with the bars and weights on my back. I do it with the ball
against the wall. You put your back against the wall and come down with the
ball between you, you poke your booty out as you go down. I learned that from a
trainer, that’s without any weights because there’s a lot of things you can do
on just that ball where you don’t need any weights at all.
AllHipHop.com: If you’re going to keep your bikini
stomach, what are some things you can do off the top?
Buffie: Crunches. The one thing I learned about
crunches is you know how people tend to come all the way up with crunches, you
don’t have to come all the way up. You can come up just enough to contract your
muscles and come up and it’s almost like someone is pushing your bellybutton
towards the floor. You don’t have to come all the way up to do a crunch – that’s
one of the mistakes I was making and it was bad on my back when you come all
the way up like that. You can come up just enough to where you’re keeping your
stomach tight and getting it pushed in, and when you come up, exhale. You can
do that same thing on a ball or mat.
“I want to write a book for the industry. Don’t get
me wrong, I don’t have a problem with Karrine Steffans at all – what she did
was her business and I’ve never had a problem with her. But I want to
contradict what she’s saying…”
AllHipHop.com: How do you keep a positive mental
attitude about your work and deal with the criticism that people might throw
your way?
Buffie: Criticism isn’t always hate, because
sometimes when people criticize you have to listen and say, “You know
what? That makes a lot of sense.” Some of it I actually take in and
sometimes I actually listen to people. But then you know when people are just
hating, when a girl says, “You’re fat” or whatever, they’re just
hating. That ain’t criticism, that’s just straight up hating for whatever
reason she has.
I tell people all the time when they say, “She just used
her a** [to get ahead]”, well it’s my a**and God gave it to me. Yes it was
my a** that got me to where I’m at now. I don’t have a problem with, really I wish
I had two a**es, because if I could get this far with one a**, imagine what I
could do with two.
I don’t look at that as being negative at all. I
got it, so yeah, I got to where I needed to get. But one thing I try to tell
models is don’t think having a big a** is gonna get you even half of what I’ve
done. I’ve seen a lot of models that’s come along since I’ve came around. Before
I came along, you didn’t really see my complexion and size on the cover of King
and Black Men’s Magazine. I came around and then it was just a flourish of big
booties, everywhere you looked everybody was like, “I got a butt bigger
than Buffie, I got a small waist.”
So I always tell them it’s cool to use the music
videos and magazines to get in the industry, but it’s gonna come a time when
people are gonna get bored seeing you and the big a**. They’re gonna start
wondering what else does this female have? That’s when you gotta start using
not only your sex appeal but your mind. Your mind is what’s gonna get you to
the next level, your beauty, big a** and small waist will get you into the
magazines and music videos, but I know you don’t wanna do that the rest of your
life. Then you gotta think “What am I gonna do next?”
I tell them find something else to do, take that
and parlay it into something else. Like now I wanna have my own workout DVDs
since I get so many emails every day. So when we get into the final stages I
can take that to a distribution companies and say, “Okay look, here’s all
of the emails I’ve gotten over the last year. These women want to see how I do
this and how I keep my stomach flat, so this is what we need to do.”
That’s one thing to always do, and the e-book I wrote is something I can do.
I want to write a book for the industry. Don’t get
me wrong, I don’t have a problem with Karrine Steffans at all – what she did
was her business and I’ve never had a problem with her. But I want to
contradict what she’s saying, not saying that what she said wasn’t true, but I
wanna be the one that puts the icing on the cake and tells that my rise to the
top wasn’t as bad as hers. I didn’t f**k and s**k nobody, I didn’t have to
spend the night at nobody’s house and let anybody come to my hotel room. I
didn’t have to sleep around to get where I got.
Now, I’m not as big as Superhead, but you gotta
think before she wrote this book, nobody knew who she was. She f**ked all these
people and nobody could tell you who she was, nobody could tell you what videos
she was in, she wasn’t on the cover of no magazines, she wasn’t hosting parties
all over the world. I’m doing all of that and getting noticed for just that
without having to sleep and do all of that. That’s why I wanted to write a book
to say, “Okay, she did it this way but you can do it this way and you
don’t have to do all of that.” You can still be known, you can still make
money, you still can drive what you wanna drive and live in the house you want
to live in. That’s why I wanna say I want to write a book.
Superhead was nobody until she started talking
about all of the people she was with. Look, I’ve done all of this and never had
to sleep with nobody, never been tied up in any scandals and look at all of the
stuff I’ve done and I’m continuing to do. I’m still around four years later and
doing this, and I was just a video girl too. But I was able to turn it into
something better, retirement plans and trying to do other things. Having a big
butt is cool, but it’s only gonna get you so far.
AllHipHop.com: Is there anything else you want
people to know about things you have coming up?
Buffie: I’m taping a pilot for a reality show with
Vida Guerra. Also if girls want to send their pictures to me at
buffie@bufffiethebody.com to be featured on my new site, as long as they’re not
nude, I’ll put them up on my site.Learn more about Buffie The Body’s new e-book at BuffieTheBody.com