Imagine that you’re a woman and you live in a sexist society. Oh, wait, you don’t have to imagine because you already do.
Right.
Imagine that you’re a woman and you live in biblical times. You know, back when Jesus was alive and riding a velociraptor, armed with an Uzi, and lecturing the poor on how awful they were.
Imagine that you have no husband, because Jesus killed all the good dudes with his Uzi, and your ex ran off on you, leaving you with three starving children.
You have no close family or friends to help you, so how exactly are you going to make a living? How are you going to feed your kids? How are you going to, literally, survive?
It’s not like you can run right over to the local Kwik Trip and get a job. You are going to have to become a prostitute, that’s what you’re going to do. Because that’s what women did when they didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. In biblical times, women had essentially no choices and very little agency over their bodies.
Flash forward to today. It’s 2000+ years after the death of Jesus and, while things are better for women overall, they’re still not where they need to be. In so many ways, everything has changed and nothing has changed. In American society, women are allowed to do most things men are allowed to do, but not without being heavily judged for it. Men who sleep around are “studs” and women who sleep around are “sluts”. Men can look like they just rolled out of bed with three-day stubble, but if a woman does the same, the comments are endless. Men can take all the Viagra they want to keep their peckers nice and firm, but women still have little (and, in some cases, zero) agency over their bodies in terms of contraception and pregnancy.
It is fucking 2017, and the quickest and easiest way for a woman to make good money is to cash in on her appearance. The monetary difference between being a gorgeous model from Slovenia and working at the Kwik Trip is massive, I’m sure. After the 1960s sexual revolution, the notion of women having sex for pleasure became more palatable to many people, and sex work itself went from being absolutely vilified to being maybe OK in certain parts of the country (like Nevada).
Education is important, of course, but it’s often not even an either/or scenario anymore. It’s quite common now for lower income women to strip or hook in order to pay for college — I personally know three women who have done this. There’s no shame in it if it’s your choice and your agency.
But if it’s not your choice and not your agency, that’s when I balk. Because the American society that makes it alright in 2017 for women to do these things is the exact same society that equally blames and punishes them for doing these things.
Where is the motherfucking line? Is there even one? And, if there is one, WHERE IS IT?!
Melania Trump is a woman who cashed in on her looks in order to leave Slovenia, and she succeeded. Whose fault is it, that she did these things? Well, pretty much all of Western civilization, but mostly America, because we sure do love our models. I could literally name 20 models off the top of my head, and I don’t even shop at Victoria’s Secret, for fuck’s sake.
Should we be attacking Melania Trump’s looks and the fact that she cashed in on them in order to get ahead? No, probably not, because the people who paid for those nude photographs are most likely the same people who chastised her for doing them in the first place. You can’t have one without the other — they are inexplicably connected.
So.
Can we please not diss the First Lady’s looks or her (rumored) multiple plastic surgeries? And can we please not call her a “hiefer” or a “whore” or “Malaria” or “Melanoma”?
There’s a metric fuckton of shit not to like about Melania Trump. We don’t need to insult her looks because, at least to me, her soul ain’t lookin’ so good these days.
Thanks in advance.