Buffie “The Body” Lewis is not working on a comeback, and on Friday, October 9, 2026, she said so on television without apologising for it.
Lewis, a South Carolina native who both of the outlets covering her describe as one of the most recognizable video models of the 2000s, sat with Tamron Hall and gave the plainest answer anybody has given to the question that follows those women around. She stopped when the money stopped. She was already in her forties, she said, while many of the women she worked alongside were in their twenties. She did not quit on principle and she did not get pushed out. The work ended, and she let it end.
It did not begin on purpose either. Lewis said swimsuit photographs she had taken spread online without her permission, and the career grew out of that. She became known after appearing in the 2005 video for “So Seductive” and had a role in the 2006 film “ATL.” In July she said she had not done a photoshoot, a music video or a hosted event in more than thirteen years.
What she does now is the part worth sitting with. She still runs her clothing brand, Brick Built. The rest of her time goes to her yard, her garden and projects around her house, and she is not turning any of it into a business. Her yard clips have found her a new audience anyway.
“I feel like it’s okay to not be doing anything,” she said. “I can say no real easy, and don’t even feel bad about it.”
That lands in a week when the conversation came back around again. After a podcast discussion about where the video models went, Gloria Velez, who did the same work in the same era, answered it on social media. “Living full lives, raising families, building businesses, and evolving, yet somehow we’re still the conversation,” she wrote. “Maybe the real question isn’t what happened to the video vixens. Maybe it’s why are y’all so obsessed with us?”
Lewis has already answered for herself. “I’m living my life now because I’m doing everything that I want to do,” she said.
