“Well damn! I heard [insert famous rapper] talking about a Maserati! You’re telling me I have a chance to get in one?”

Done deal.

And the worst part of all this, is that this paradigm is not even being left alone to live or die on its own. It’s being ADVERTISED on a daily, hourly, (minutely?) basis, reminding us CONSTANTLY what we’re supposed to think, want, be.

Basically I think the world we live in is changing from the barbaric way it used to be. We are much more intelligent and we can use our brains for far greater things. With that change should come a change in what we search for in a mate. This is a social norm that’s got some serious catching up to do.

Another reason they get exploited is because they allow themselves to be. I’m happy that this girl was able to play her cards in such a way that she could leave unharmed. I’m happy that this man didn’t get the opportunity to show her an even darker side to his personality.

But WHY did she leave with him? WHY did her friends cosign that decision? If they said nothing, they cosigned. Inaction is an action.

So many young (and not so young) women are so caught up in this Hollywood fairytale that they can’t call a spade a spade. At 20, she’s young and that clouds her decision-making, but that was stupid. I’m not saying that from a place of judgment because I’ve made stupid decisions like that too; only I ended up at my destination safely.

Women and men need to teach their daughters, sisters, female cousins and friends to stop going after men with money just because they have money. That allure, I think, is what ends up being harmful for so many more people than just the individual holding that ideology. Men who don’t drive sports cars or have wealth to flaunt have an enormous challenge in finding partners not because they’re not good men or because they can’t play the role as providers, but because they can’t play it as well as women like to think rich men can.

It’s interesting that with all the opportunities that are available to women, at the end of the day, they tend to want that 1950s housewife role. “You make the money and take care of me.” Women can have their own now, but they either don’t want to work for it, or they mostly want to make that money solely based off their bodies…and then complain about exploitation and objectification.

The ideological shift away from this can’t only come from the work and transformation of women; it has to be holistic and inclusive to men. When you seek to empower women by only building the esteem of women and educating them, there becomes an inevitable battle between men and women. So much of so-called “female empowerment” has been based around providing economic opportunity that is or is almost equal. All this has done is reinforce that a person’s value is rooted in finances, which is a huge mistake. The role of a housewife was never quantified. There was certainly a value, but it was more qualitative than quantitative. All that was known was that she didn’t have an income.

It seems kind of off-topic to talk about housewives and pimping in the same conversation, but I say all that to highlight the fact that what we value in life doesn’t always have a price tag. In fact, much of what we value in life cannot be bought. Still, young women are constantly allured by fantasies of Prince Charming wifing them up and ridding them of any possible financial concern.

It’s a hoax, especially when those young women don’t have any qualitative value to quantify in the first place.