Amber Rose wants to remind us of an undeniably true but often overlooked fact: Nobody's perfect.
We often forget this, though—especially, Amber notes, when it comes to women criticizing other women. This is why, in a powerful op-ed for Time, the model and How To Be a Bad Bitch author urges all the ladies to ease up on each other, and to give themselves a break, too.
"Ever since high school, I've been called a slut," Amber writes. "All the boys were attracted to me—that wasn't my fault! Then, when I started getting famous, the shaming got even worse. All these messed up stories came out about me, and I was like, 'That's not true! I'm not that kind of girl!' But even things I had done—things a man would never be judged for—got me lots of hate."
Wiz Khalifa's ex used to let the derogatory and sexist remarks drag her down. "But in the past year," she writes, "I've just started not caring." It happened, she explains, when she "realized that I can't make everyone believe. And I can't talk to everyone and tell them who I really am. They're still going to have their own opinions."
"If you know me, you love me. If you don't know me, you might love me, but you might not—and that's cool," she continues. "And you know what? Now I sleep like a baby at night."
In her Time op-ed, Amber writes about what an "amazing feeling" it is to "really stop caring about what [other] people say." As Amber notes, "It's about loving who you are, owning who you are and knowing that it's O.K. to live your life how you want to live it."
She also encourages us all to have some empathy for one another. "So please: Before you judge someone—especially another woman—put yourself in her shoes and also look at your past," she writes. "That's what a lot of women fail to do. They're so quick to call another girl names, but it's like: You know what? There may have been a time where you looked back and said, 'I probably shouldn't have done that.' Does that make you a ho? No, it makes you a human."