21-year-old model Slick Woods is on the cover of the September 2018 edition of Elle UK showing off her baby bump.
The model who is also a face of Rihanna’s beauty line, Fenty Beauty and Fenty X Puma is expecting her first baby with fellow model, Adonis Bosso, and in her first Magazine cover since she debuted the pregnancy on her Instagram, the model talks Rihanna, her mother who is in jail for manslaughter, growing up and sexuality among other things.
See excerpts below.
On sexuality: ‘I never thought I’d be with anyone like him,’ she says, vague about how she defines their relationship, but pointing out that she likes that they both maintain independence, with him living in LA and her in Brooklyn. She is also keeping the option open of one day being with a woman again: ‘With sexuality, when you are a public figure you have to pick a side, black or white. But I’m grey.’
On Rihanna: ‘[Rihanna] saw a photo of me on Instagram, found me, and we hit it off,’ she says. ‘You ever loved someone so much that every time you see them, you end up in tears somehow? She reminds me of my mother. Like, they’re the same person. I tell them they remind me of each other all the time.’
On her mum: Though her mum is still in prison, they talk three times a day in approved 15-minute intervals. ‘We talk about everything – except modelling. She asks me how my day is. We don’t need to talk about magazines,’ she says. ‘Being a gang member, everybody expected her not to be the best mum. But my mum was very hands-on with me as a child. My mummy read to me in the womb. And she’s proud because she knows that everybody expected me to be exactly what she was. She went to prison when she was 19. I became a model at 19. And I can take care of my mother when she gets out.’
On what her relationship with her son would be: ‘At 14, 15, I never expected to ever be giving any type of life; to be this happy with having a child. From not having family to being able to create your own,’ she says. ‘Things you lacked, things you missed out on, trauma – you can erase that by creating new life. All those things you didn’t get, all those hugs and kisses. I can retract those things with my son’s life. In giving him that childhood, it heals you as well. In hugging your son, it’s giving a piece of that back to you, too. I need him as much as he needs me.’
