Saturday, March 15, 2008

One Step Ahead, Two Back

This strikes me as a tough week for women. What we all know and can do nothing about once again hits us between the headlines: Women are most valued in the world for one thing: sex.

Re: the NY governer and his fall from grace with a prostitution scandal. Looks like the 'straight arrow' governor was taking the straight route to extramarital sex - he was paying for it. And not just a little bit of money. A LOT OF MONEY. Thousands of dollars a trick. Ouch.

I ask....really, how good could sex be to make it worth that kind of money? And the risk? How could it be worth risking your entire career and lifestyle?

Despite the governor being the one to get publicly nailed on this, part of the reason it's been a tough week for women is that the latest hooker he was caught with is now a celebrity. An aspiring and unknown singer to date, she's now charging money to let people listen to her sing on her website, and she will pass the $1M mark within days. She's already been offered a boatload of money to appear in Penthouse. No doubt she'll have her own talk show and line of cosmetics soon....probably a movie part and a debut album. Voila! Her career is launched.

The hard part? That's for the rest of us. Once again, we are reminded, as women, it does not matter how hard we work at legitimate jobs, how smart we are, how dedicated we are to our work, how much real value we can add to the world.....if we'd simply just sell our bodies for sex, we'd leap way ahead of most other women (and men) in our careers, in our financial status and our lifestyles.

Why is it that no matter how far we think we've come, when you look into the dark crannies of what really goes on in society, we're still most valued for the one thing we've been valued on for years. Yes, that.

The other reason it's been a tough week for women? Spitzer's wife. Standing there dutifully by her husband's side while he confesses his behavior to the world and publicly acknowledges his betrayal of her, for all the world to watch. Can you imagine her nightmare? And why is she expected to stand there and support him? Why should she have to stand there and be cast in his shadow after he so pubicly destroyed her life?

In the end, we have a woman engaged in the world's oldest profession, now made. And we have a woman standing by her man, now destroyed. It's pretty clear, despite the obvious act at hand, which of these women really got screwed in this scenario. One would expect the former to be shamed and take a societal fall. But it's really the latter suffering that.. The former is ashamed all the way to the bank and the spotlight.

Tough week for women. But mostly a tough week and an ugly commentary on society, I'd say.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great post! Bang on the nail...

It amazes me that in today's society when we are obsessed with equality that the women who wander around half undressed, take their clothes off all the time, diet to within an inch of their lives and want to be nothing more than a plastic enhanced prop on a footballer's arm are seen as the gold standard of women and, worse, potential role models to aspire to! As you say, an ugly indictment of society...