Last year a photo of myself and a male friend, who happens to play football, was posted on MediaTakeout.com under the over used-heading “New Couple Alert!!” In addition to false heading was another comment on the accompanying photo which read something like “Awwww, Melyssa finally found an NFL’er to wife her up!”
Really? Thanks for the free press but is it too much to ask some of these blogs to do a tiny bit of fact checking? How about a little journalistic integrity? It’s a lost art form, I tell you. My favorite was when Bossip.com posted an elaborate story on me dating Raekwon, from Wu Tang, which had been conjured up by his very imaginative marketing team and/or publicists. To this day, I’ve never met him, and Bossip didn’t feel it was important enough to ask me if I was even acquainted with Rae, much less his new “boo”.
This is what comes as part of the package deal with visibility, celebrity and just being in the public eye in general so in no way shape or form am I making an appeal for sympathy. I take this foolishness with a grain of salt and move on with my life. It’s part of the publicity game to use relationships or “faux-relationships” to push projects like upcoming albums, movies, books etc; any tactic can be used to introduce or reintroduce someone to the limelight and get lips a flappin’. Integrity evidently doesn’t exist in this world, neither does loyalty or honesty; but one would hope that both parties are aware of the situation before its plastered on computer screens around the country, or for that matter, the world.
But I’m getting off topic. My main gripe is the fact that the average single woman in this business is under constant attack; she may as well have leprosy or some other communicable disease! Everyone stands around, gossiping about who her rumored conquests and bed fellows have been, pointing and shaking their fingers at her as if she’s walking around with a scarlet letter on her chest. Judging her based upon rumor and innuendo, rather than celebrating her for not becoming one of the rising statistics of women spending money paying for divorce lawyers, who entered into a union, perhaps fool heartedly because she couldn’t stand the pressure that society places upon us to FIND A MAN AND GET MARRIED! At the same time, their pity for her is so evident you would think that singledom is equivalent to a life sentence, as if every unattached woman is supposed to be hoping against hope that someone will come along and parole her from having to put on the brave face for the masses and act like she’s happy.
And forget about her professional pursuits; that’s only a beard, for once those 4 karats are slipped on her finger she can give up the charade, sit the down and pop out some kiddies…
Gimme a break.
If societal perception was to be believed than the single man is biding his time and weighing his options; a single woman is lonely and desperate and wishing upon every star in the damn sky that her Prince Charming is gonna pull up in a Bentley, throw some diamonds and cash her way and say “C’mon girl, you MY bitch now. I‘m claiming you.”
My total embrace of my chosen single lady status has me wondering, have I simply become disengaged from the affects of The Cinderella Complex? This is something that, primarily, women suffer from, which is the direct result of being force fed the fairy tale dream, the “happily-ever-after” ending we’re all expected to pursue. So many women are taught, not only is the ultimate goal of achievement landing a man, getting that rock on your finger, settling down and popping out some kids, but that it is our duty as the female of the
