If you’re a fan and follower of Fenty Beauty favorite Slick Woods, you likely already knew that she had big news in store, but on the cover of Elle UK’s September issue the beaming model proudly reveals that she’s also a mother-to-be.
Woods kicked off July with a sweet poolside reveal of her growing belly on Instagram, simply captioned “in good company.” A week later, she posted again announcing that she’s seven months along, meaning she’s been very effective at keeping her pregnancy under wraps—even at friend Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty launch in May. It makes sense, since after an incorrect diagnosis of infertility in her teens, Woods reportedly didn’t even know she was expecting until about five months into her pregnancy.
Not under wraps? The sex of Woods’ baby (it’s a boy!), or his father, the equally striking Ivorian model Adonis Bosso. “My son’s going to be gorgeoussss,” Woods tells Elle UK. And while she doesn’t strictly define her bicoastal relationship with Bosso, she admits “I never thought I’d be with anyone like him,” referring to the fact that she’d primarily dated women prior—and possibly will again.
“With sexuality, when you are a public figure, you have to pick a side, black or white. But I’m gray,” she says. So when a commenter was aghast that Woods was pregnant, indelicately saying “Whattt? I thought she was lesbo,” the model rightfully clapped back.
“To think we live in a world where people still confuse sexuality with reproduction,” she wrote. “Grow up.”
At 21 years old (turning 22 in August) with only three years in the modeling industry under her belt since her first major booking (with Yeezy), Woods has blazed a trail for herself as an unconventional beauty. Now, she—along with Bosso—is excited for her next chapter, even enlisting Erykah Badu (known as “Erykah Badoula” on Twitter), as her “spiritual guide” through childbirth.
“She’s a mommy role model,” Woods tells Elle. “A mother I look up to, who kills her shit and is a boss-ass bitch.”
Woods’ own mother has been in prison for manslaughter most of Woods’ life (Woods was raised by her grandmother), but that didn’t keep her from being a role model to her daughter. The two are extremely close, speaking three times a day in approved intervals, and as Woods tells Elle:
Being a gang member, everybody expected her not to be the best mom. But my mom was very hands-on with me as a child. My mommy 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.
Now on the verge of becoming a mother herself, Woods is reflective about her own troubled youth (she spent a brief stint in prison herself and overcame a drug addiction) and is determined to break that cycle for her son.
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. 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.
Woods also plans to raise her son with the knowledge that there is strength in vulnerability, saying. “I’m going to stand up for my son. I want him to feel proud as a black man. Everyone is telling men it’s wrong to express their feelings, but I will not let him feel like his feelings are wrong.”
And how does she feel about bringing a child into a very troubled world?
“If you’ve never had hope for the future, you have to. You can create life; whatever you want that life to be. The more kids you have paying it forward, the more new ideas there will be. You have to get your army ready.”