Pimping Out Babies....When Enough is Enough

I’m going to need women to stop using their reproductive power as a way to gain fame. There’s the Octo-Mom, Kate Gosselin, the Duggar lady with her 567 kids and counting, the Pregnant Man who’s now on pregnancy number three. And then there’s this lady, Rielle Hunter. In 2007, news reports broke that Hunter, a film producer, had an ongoing affair with John Edwards. It’s now three years later and this woman has managed to stretch her fifteen minutes of fame out to the edges of the earth. She has a new spread in GQ Magazine with photos of her posing “seductively” (if that’s what we can call it) with the daughter she had with Edwards. Though it’s hard not to focus on the fact that Edwards was reckless enough to impregnate a woman while his wife was dealing with incurable cancer, it’s also alarming to think that this woman is actually surpassing his level of crazy. Why is this 46-year-old woman pimping out the evidence (read “her daughter”) of her affair in a men’s magazine years after the fact?

I always wonder about women who sleep with powerful men and then use that sexual experience as leverage to get their name in headlines. There are other ways, ladies, so many other ways. In one photo, the woman clasps the little girl to her as she dons a half shirt. Oooh sexay. Except not. Half shirts belong either in the 80’s or in the trashcan. But let me not get distracted here. I’m also perturbed by the way the woman tries to smize (and yes that means “smile with your eyes”; I’ll give Tyra Banks credit where credit is due) and appear sensual with her bed-head hair. As if to say “I’m important because I slept with this famous, powerful guy” she’s also placed in a bed with rumpled sheets because we ALL know what that means….

This story’s funny to me because it just makes no sense and it’s unfortunately not new either. No one should seek fame so much that they sleep with a man that she ought not to, discuss it constantly to different media outlets and then take pics with the baby that made us at all "interested" in the story. I don’t begrudge anyone the right to get pregnant when they want to but babies shouldn’t be used to make help Mommy get on the cover of magazines or to show up on Susie Reed’s newsfeed. Using your vagina to get famous? Not exactly unique. I guess if I could ask Rielle two questions they’d be the following: “You’re really gonna fall back on the oldest trick in the book?” and, more importantly, “What’s up with that?”