First Frozen, now This?

I was perusing one of my regular sites for news when I came across a headline about the Bachelor. First of all, I don't watch the Bachelor. Secondly, it's embarrassing to admit that I read a website that would publish an article about the Bachelor. To be honest, I sort of wish I was saying, "The Bachelor, what's that?" But the reality is that summaries of the most recent episode of the Bachelor are found on many major news sites.

Now normally I would just skip by such an article, but this one had a curious detail. Apparently on the most recent episode of the Bachelor the woman who was kicked off was a Playboy model. I scanned the article to see if she was kicked off because she was a Playboy model, and it seems that there was a lot of reassurance that this was not the reason - reassurance of the kind that makes you think it was definitely the reason.

First of all, the idea that a person wouldn't want to be with someone because that someone is currently employed as a sex worker or porn actor seems like something that I can understand. That's not to say I agree with that decision, but I can imagine, especially on a first or second date, that person might decline to continue such a relationship for a variety of reasons that don't say super-awful things about the person doing the declining. If nothing else, it might be asking them to transgress existing boundaries they have about monogamy when it is just too early in the relationship for them to commit that much.

But let's dial it back a bit here. This was not sex worker or a porn star, this is someone who posed for Playboy. I'm not even sure if it seems right to call Playboy pornography anymore, it's just nudes. You can probably see racier stuff at any art gallery. Women appear nude in photos in fashion and style magazines. At this point, if someone is reading Playboy, it is almost certainly for the articles, because actual sex can be watched on the ubiquitous internet.

I've never dated someone who had posed naked for photos to be published. I did once go on a date with someone who was planning on dancing in lingerie in a shop window in exchange for store credit the following morning. I certainly didn't say, "Well, I guess there's no future for us."

And to put all of that aside, the fundamental question that arises from this is: How could posing nude for Playboy possibly be a more embarrassing fact about your past than being on the Bachelor? It's possible that just talking about the Bachelor is more embarrassing than a nude photo shoot could ever be. Remind me to delete this post when my children are old enough to read.