One of the publicists for W Magazine mailed me the full text of the diary Naomi Campbell kept during her five days of sanitation work community service in New York. While she name-drops designer brands and famous friends throughout and goes out of her way to make it seem as if she’s this caring person who bonds with her coworkers, I have to say I don’t hate her after reading this. She comes off like a superficial person who is trying to make it seem like she’s changing and growing, and I guess she’s trying at least. I expected her to seem much more haughty, but maybe she had a lot of editorial help with this piece.

Campbell says that wearing couture to her job was just how she dresses, and makes herself out to be a dedicated worker. She also describes a much-publicised incident in which a police officer was carrying her purse, saying she didn’t realize he was a cop and just thought he should carry it to be a gentlemen. She uses the tried and true “there’s a war in Iraq and people are focusing on ‘lil ‘ol me and my gaffes” excuse:

What I wear walking into my community service has no connection to what I’m going to do when I get inside. This is how I dress, and this is how I carry myself. What do they expect me to do—walk in looking all drib and drab? I’ve never looked drib and drab in my life…

So I keep on sweeping. I’m moving so fast they tell me to slow down. I’m getting very protective of my pile of rubbish—kind of the way I feel about my Hermès handbag or my Louis Vuitton. I keep looking around to make sure no one is crossing into the area I was assigned to sweep. I guess that’s my all-or-nothing behavior again: Once I start sweeping, I have to sweep everything…

I decide to wear black. It’s getting crazy. I’m getting all these calls from designers and stylists asking me to wear their clothes. Apparently, people on the Internet are rating my outfits. With everything happening in the world—in Iraq, in Africa—this is what they focus on? In the car, my bodyguard looks at me and says, “I know you don’t like seeing the newspapers, but you need to look at this.” And it’s that policeman carrying my bag. I feel so bad. I didn’t mean to embarrass him. When I arrive, I go straight to him and say, “I’m so sorry.” And he looks at me and goes, “It was my pleasure.”

She details her life growing up with a single mom who was away most of the time while working as a professional ballet dancer. From the age of 3 to 12 she was raised by the help, and just got to see her mom, who constantly travelled, on holidays. Maybe that’s why she always beats up her staff – she resents her mother for leaving her to be raised by nannies. She also says her mother agreed to go to therapy with her:

I grew up very much on my own. I never knew my father. And my mother, who was a contemporary ballet dancer, left me with a nanny from the time I was three until I was 12 while she traveled. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her to leave me, but she was a single mother and she had to work. I can’t imagine the pain she felt when my father abandoned us. I would see her on vacations, when she would pop over for a few days. It was always a delight to see my beautiful young mother. How happy I’d be when she picked me up from school.

Recently, my mother agreed to go into therapy with me.
It’s something I wanted for a long time but haven’t started because now I need to get myself on the right path first. Part of that involves cutting a lot of working relationships. I don’t really have many yes-people in my life anymore. I’ve gotten away from them—all the agents, assistants, people who would never tell me the truth and watch me destroy myself. But of course many of those people maybe didn’t want to work with me anymore, either, which I totally understand.

Campbell also says she takes responsibility for throwing the cellphone at her maid, but that she didn’t smash her in the face with it and just threw it. The woman needed stitches, so if she threw it she was probably damn close or has exceptional aim:

What I came to realize is that I had to surrender. I’m such a controlling person, but I had to just let go and let something higher than me be in control of my destiny. You have to let yourself become vulnerable again.

Some people can handle a drink or a line of cocaine, but I’ve finally come to realize that, for me, it’s all or nothing—and it has to be nothing. And my life has changed since.

I’m not saying this to excuse what I did. I threw the phone—I threw it, but I didn’t bash it—and that was wrong.

I’m guilty.
I take responsibility.

As I mentioned when I read some excerpts earlier in the week, it sounds like she’s spouting AA platitudes in order to sound deep.

She’s not going to win any fans with this diary, but I don’t think she’ll lose any either. Campbell is who she is, and she’s damn proud to wear couture and strut around. If only she’d work out her issues from childhood maybe she could control that legendary temper.

Thanks to Style.com for this story and pictures. It was rumored that Campbell would be shown scrubbing toilets and mopping up, and I would have preferred to see her that way, but I doubt that she’d allow it. There’s not a humble bone in her body but she deserves a smidgeon of credit for doing her court-mandated job, even if she’s squeezing every drop of PR possible out of it.

That dress she’s wearing on the cover of W looks like a white version of the one she was seen in at the Costume Institute Gala. I thought it was Bjork’s Oscar swan dress at first.