Week of 04/20/2009

The Scandal of Skin
– by David Matthews 2

There’s a very simple message to all young women who are even remotely thinking about becoming a teacher: stay away from photographers.

Don’t be anywhere near a modeling studio. Run if you see someone approach you with a professional-looking camera.

While we’re at it, don’t be caught at the beach wearing anything less than a muumuu. Don’t have any pictures taken of you in your underwear. Don’t take part in wet T-shirt contests or bikini contests; no matter how many times your friends would try to coax you into them. Don’t even go to any of the “party cities” for spring break. Stay away from New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Wear full sweats at the gym when you work out. Don’t ever get a tattoo… even if it’s someplace hidden that only your boyfriend would see. In fact it probably would be best if you hunted down all of those pictures your parents took of you when you were a baby of your first bath and burned them.

Oh, and… don’t have a boyfriend. Boyfriends are dangerous creatures. They’re the ones that talk you into the clutches of photographers and tattoo artists. Stick with arranged marriages, preferably to old people with no imagination, or else live your life as a cloistered nun.

Sure it’s all outdated, but at least you would be able to live your dream of working with kids.

This puritanical message is being brought to the general public through a pack of vicious spoiled teenagers, equally vicious ego-centered parents, hypersensitive government officials, the air-fluffed ego-driven media, and a young woman who made the mistake of living a double life.

Carlie Becker was a cheerleader coach for a high school in California. But when she wasn’t playing with pom-poms, she was modeling under the name of Carlie Christine, showing off what good genes (and a local tattoo artist) can give you.

Hey, why not, right? I mean, she’s young… and she’s every bit attractive. And the school officials supposedly KNEW that she was modeling and thought nothing of it. After all, as long as she’s modeling under another name and makes no connection to her day job, everything should be okay.

But then she had to make some cuts to the cheerleading squad. And that’s when vicious spoiled teenagers revealed that Coach Becker was really Carlie Christine, Playboy’s Cyber Club Model of the Week for February 9^th.

First, of course, they told their vicious ego-centered parents of the secret, along with some visual proof. Their vicious ego-centered parents then sent the pictures of Carlie’s exposed and tattooed rear end to school administrators. Then the hypersensitive school officials, who had previously had no qualms to Carlie’s extracurricular activity, quickly kicked her out on her exposed tattooed rear. The cheerleading cuts were reversed, the tryouts would resume again under the assistant coach, and the vicious spoiled girls got their pound of flesh, so to speak.

And of course, this quickly hit the periphery of the air-fluffed ego-driven media so other vicious ego-centered parents can scream about it.

By the way, the kids didn’t have to go too far into the Internet to find the pictures. Carlie’s face and ink-stained backside were (and still are) both featured in the free section of the Playboy website.

Once upon a time, Carlie COULD have pulled it off. She could have been both a cheerleader coach AND a Playboy model and nobody would have been the wiser as long as she kept the two aspects of her life separate. As long as she didn’t announce as a coach that she was a model, and as long as she didn’t mention when she modeled that she was a coach, she could have had the best of both worlds, at least for a little while. She certainly could have had it longer than the couple of months that her coaching job lasted.

Unfortunately, as the old story goes, the Internet changed things.

Now a schoolteacher that goes to spring break and participates in a bikini contest will find herself out of a job before the summer recess. A teacher that follows through with a risqué bet in some remote section of the world will end up being a media celebrity around the world.

Now folks, as strange as it may sound, I’m with Carlie on this matter. It’s NOT right that she should be fired for something that school officials KNEW she did before she was hired! The fault in this case rests with the self-centered spoiled girls along with their ego-centered vicious parents who were willing to do anything to get what their precious little tax deductions want.

Sadly, though, it is the vicious ego-centered parents that usually call the shots in local governments. They are the ones that are willing to ruin lives and destroy careers just so their precious tax deductions can get that little bit of social status. To them that’s more important than any kind of lesson learned in the classroom.

Let’s get brutally honest here… this is the secret reason why school teachers were traditionally expected to be joyless automatons. The dysfunctional expectation was that teachers had no life so they could not influence the lives of their students. They couldn’t teach anything that was contrary to the lessons the parents of the students wanted them to learn. That’s why nuns and priests were considered to be ideal teachers, and why that mold was imposed on all others.

Of course, Carlie was not a teacher. She was a coach; and that put her at an even greater risk of the wrath of ego-centered parents and students obsessed with status.

Vicious ego-centered parents will do anything for their precious tax deductions to get that little bit of status. They will hire professional consultants. They will get up early and wait in line for HOURS for their kid’s registration. They will even hire hitmen to kill their rivals.

And that is precisely the kind of lesson that is taught to their tax deductions! Their obsessive fixation on status is the one lesson that their precious tax deductions will take to heart more than any other lesson in school. Forget rules! Forget ethics! Status rules the day and “win at all costs” is the only ethic they adhere to. Nothing is more sacred than their social status, and if they have to ruin lives and destroy careers to get it, then they will do it without losing a moment of sleep over it.

Equally sad is the knowledge that school officials, be they government or private schools, would much rather fire the individual that stands out instead of taking on and fix the systemic problem. This is the real hindrance to dealing with the obsessive behaviors of the ego-centered parents and their spoiled spawns.

Ideally it should not matter that Carlie is model, or that she poses for Playboy. As long as she kept that part of her life separate from her work with the school, it should not have mattered one bit. Unfortunately our school systems are far from ideal, and quite literally the only way to avoid scrutiny in that situation is to purge yourself of any kind of personal pleasures and commit yourself 24-7 to being nothing more than a teacher.

And thus we go back to that sad and repressive advice I presented concerning those women who want to be teachers. It’s painfully obvious from the hysteria generated from those vindictive ego-centered parents, from the hypersensitive hypocritical school officials, and from the panic-inducing ratings-obsessive members of the media, that teachers are supposed to be cloistered automatons with no kind of life or beauty whatsoever. And thus if you ever had a life or if you ever hope to have a life, you should re-think your goals. Perhaps instead of teaching kids, you could start teaching dogs. At least they don’t hire assassins if they can’t fetch.