Amber Rose Transforms Into History’s Feminist Icons for ‘Paper’

Amber Rose as Rosie the Riveter. Photo: Charlotte Rutherford for Paper

2015 will (maybe) be remembered as the year that sometimes-model and actress Amber Rose rebranded herself as a feminist hero.

In early October, the former girlfriend of Kanye West and ex-wife of Wiz Khalifa held her first “Slut Walk” in Los Angeles, with the intention of empowering women and encouraging them to own their sexuality and take back the negative terms and slurs that’ve been weighing them down since the dawn of time. She also released a book called How To Be a Bad Bitch—i.e., the definitive guide to becoming Amber Rose.

Amber Rose as Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes. Photo: Charlotte Rutherford for Paper

But in a new interview, Rose tells Paper Magazine that she wasn’t always so pro-female—and in fact, was once a “slut-shamer, completely.” It wasn’t until her breakup with Khalifa, in 2014, that she felt inspired to turn things around.

"I would look on [Wiz’s] Instagram and he would have pictures of all these women all over him… and then I would post a picture of me and my son. And people would be like, ‘Does your son know that his mother’s a whore?'” she says. "People are like, 'Wiz is out f–king mad bad bitches and you’re at home crying over him because he’s the best thing that f–king ever happened to you and now you’re just a fat, bald-headed single mother and no one will ever love you.’ So yeah, I guess months of seeing s–t like that, I was just like, 'I can’t live like this. There’s something wrong.’”

Amber Rose as Pussy Riot. Photo: Charlotte Rutherford for Paper

So, to celebrate her accomplishments and newfound feminism, Paper—the same publication that put that champagne glass on Kim Kardashian’s tush, and that pig on Miley Cyrus’s everything—decided to dress Rose up like some of history’s most important feminists, with everyone from Susan B. Anthony to Gloria Steinem and Pussy Riot getting the ‘Bad Bitch’ treatment.

See more of Amber Rose playing dress up at Paper.

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