Source: The Vital Voice
Shelly Hickman loves haters.
“Haters are your number one fans,” she explains while at her kitchen table in South City. It’s a Friday night and I’ve decided to tag along with Shelly and her friends down Manchester in an attempt to document a night out with a ‘Bad Girl’.
You may recognize Hickman from Rehab Bar and Grill where she bartends but fans of Oxygen Network’s Bad Girls Club will soon be watching her on the addictive reality show produced by reality juggernauts Bunim/Murray. The show is an all femme fatale version of The Real World where cameras follow the relationships and dramas of seven “bad girls” from across the country as they party and cat fight. Drinks are thrown…claws come out…weave is pulled…and I shamelessly love every second.
Tonight, Shelly’s nails are painted in pink leopard print, her pumps are black and she’s pulling off a blonde bombshell effect.
“A lot of people think they know me but they have no idea who the hell I am,” she says. The show has yet to premiere and Shelly already has been grappling with the weight of fame in a small town like St. Louis.
“I am petrified. I’ve let them [the producers] have the power to make me into whatever they want. I know I’m a good person and so do my friends and family but the people who watch the show will only know what they see. It is extremely uncomforting.”
And a lot of people will be watching. Bad Girls Club has been a ratings success for Oxygen and the show pulls more than two million viewers per season. That means Shelly is in store for thousands of fans and thousands of haters.
We meet one of the “haters” while having drinks at Attitudes when a random homosexual claims to have known Shelly for years and that she can be “dramatic and over sensitive.”
She flips through my note pad and scratches an X across his quote and writes the word HATER and an arrow.
“That guy doesn’t even know me! I think it’s a joke when people want you to be a fame hungry person because they’re hungry themselves and they’re just trying to feed their mouths not yours. You have to ignore people like that.”
She says she doesn’t want to lose herself in the glitz and glamour of her impending fame.
“I had a life before the show and when the show ended I came home to the life I had before. I love it that way. A lot of these girls want the fame and the money and they completely forget about the life they had before the show.”
Before reality television, Shelly was the resident lesbian bartender who loves animals and other “real women.” She grew up in O’Fallon, Missouri where she says she survived a turbulent childhood with a drug addicted mother in and out of jail.
“I can remember her taking me on drug deals, pulling out guns in front of me, stealing from the store and putting the products in my bag," she says. “It was terrible. She’d get out of jail and promise she had changed and I would give her a second and third and fourth chance but she was always fucking it up.”
Shelly says she has an amazing relationship with her step-mother who gave her the emotional support she needed during that time and when she came out to her family at 19.
“I knew when I was 12 that I was gay but I hid it. If I had thought it would have been more accepted I would probably be a golden ticket!” she jokes. I ask her what a golden ticket is.
“Never had sex with a guy,” she replies with a coy smile.
We finish our drinks and decide to walk over to Novak’s to continue the party. Now this is where it gets blurry. Fans of BGC will know that one of the guilty pleasures of the show is getting to watch the brawls and fights the girls get into and tonight we happen to find our very own on the sidewalk outside the bar.
To all of our credit the fight starts when a bully in his car gets upset that Shelly and her friends turn down his cat calls from his raggedy car rolling down Manchester. He gets out and begins cursing at us…I tell him to get the fuck back inside the car and leave us alone…I get punched in the face.
In true BGC fashion, it goes down.
When the dust settles we brush ourselves off and head to the bar.
“That was crazy!,” Shelly says to me. “I’m glad you’re okay. I totally threw myself on you to keep him from kicking your head.”
And in the end it’s that mothering instinct that ultimately defines her.
“I truly believe I was put on this Earth to be a mother. I want to have soccer practice and be a housewife someday. I want to be the mother to my kids that I never had.”
For now she’s content with life at home with her dog Ella and her gay family at Rehab.
“I want a happy life and to live this for all its worth.”
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