"Kristen" Ashley Alexandra Dupre Story Shows How Media Bias Influences Perception
The New York Times paints an empathetic portrait of "Kristen," the high-priced call girl who was born Ashley Youmans and raised in New Jersey.
The Daily News essentially trashes her as a human being with catty quotes from other young women who attended her high school.
Michael Daly of the Daily News writes a very smug, patronizing column on the woman who called herself Ashley Alexandra Dupre on her just-deleted MySpace account.
Oh how we love our bad girls who take down powerful political figures! The Monica Lewinskys, the Jessica Cutlers (aka Washingtonienne), and now Ashley Alexandra Dupre. We love to hate them and pity them at the same time.
But what we love (or hate) isn't the young woman at the center of the firestorm. We love the media fiction that's created, the image that is built.
The reality of who they are isn't something we can ever really know, because we see them through the distorted lens of pop culture media, the ever-growing news-as-entertainment culture.
Who are they? They are who we want them to be.
Comments
Actually, as an older guy, I’m fascinated by the thought of beautiful young women. Any guy is, regardless of what they say to your face. If this attractive 22-year-old was willing to spend time with an older guy, maybe there’s hope for me. After all, we all harbor a hope that we can connect in some way and she’ll give me for free what she charged others for.
It’s a hormonal fantasy, I know. However, it is a powerful one.
Hey Tom, whilst as an older guy you may entertain some fantasy of a 22 yr old woman coming along and igniting that flame that may have long been extinguished, I believe the main point of the story is about women who wield power sexually and use this to their advantage with a male in power are the ones who are vilified by the media as contaminating the man and in the broader society as whores, sluts and promiscious. Whilst the male escapes with his integrity almost intact with his wife standing loyally by his side! A very hypocritical society with double standards!
We live in a society which rewards people for the wrong reasons and glorifies immorality and lack of character. Ashley Youmans her real name is a whore. She is not deserving of any sympathy or respect.
Spitzer is a sleazy politician like any other. They all lie about something. He deserves no sympathy or respect either and hopefully his wife will have the courage and self respect to leave him.
Most Men have a serious issue with keeping it up after a certain age…these poor guys need to pay someone to put up with their very frustrating ways. Remember the more you pay…the less complaining goes on while laughing all the way to the bank!!!! LOL!!!!!
Trash Sells…it’s the American Way!
To all but comment #3 & 5- What is wrong with you people? No wonder people like “Kristin” make money in the end. Tom = issues. Really- get a grip ou pathetic loser. Mata Hari – there is no power in this you twit. She is a call girl. There is no sexuality power in being a call girl. She gets no real status from what she does. Diane- you are an idiot too. Would you like your daughter laughing the way to the bank. If yes- have abortions. You are not a fit human being.
quit being nice to these kinds of people. She is worthless- Spitzer is worthless. Nuff said.
Victims of Morality
by Emma Goldman
Now, as to the prostitute. In spite of laws, ordinances, persecution, and prisons; in spite of segregation, registration, vice crusades, and other similar devices, the prostitute is the real specter of our age. She sweeps across the plains like a fire burning into every nook of life, devastating, destroying.
After all, she is paying back, in a very small measure, the curse and horrors society has strewn in her path. She, weary with the tramp of ages, harassed and driven from pillar to post, at the mercy of all, is yet the Nemesis of modern times, the avenging angel, ruthlessly wielding the sword of fire. For has she not the man in her power? And, through him, the home, the child, the race. Thus she slays, and is herself the most brutally slain.
What has made her? Whence does she come? Morality, the morality which is merciless in its attitude to women. Once she dared to be herself, to be true to her nature, to life, there is no return: the woman is thrust out from the pale and protection of society. The prostitute becomes the victim of Morality, even as the withered old maid is its victim.
But the prostitute is victimized by still other forces, foremost among them the Property Morality, which compels woman to sell herself as a sex commodity for 1000 dollar per, out of wedlock (contract), or for fifteen hundred dollars a week, in the sacred fold of matrimony. The latter is no doubt safer, more respected, more recognized, but of the two forms of prostitution the girl of the street is the least hypocritical, the least debased, since her trade lacks the pious mask of hypocrisy; and yet she is hounded, fleeced, outraged, and shunned, by the very powers that have made her: the financier, the priest, the moralist, the judge, the jailor, and the detective, not to forget her sheltered, respectably virtuous sister; who is the most relentless and brutal in her persecution of the prostitute. by Emma Goldman First published in March, 1913