Many years ago, there was a comedian that talked about a teenage girl who wanted to be like Madonna. The teenage girl said since Madonna was able to have a baby without a man in her life, she could too. The comedian laid out the facts that Madonna was famous and rich, and that Madonna could hire nannies, could afford the best for her child, and had a profession where she could pick and choose where she worked. Most teenage mothers don’t have the options celebrities have, so it’s illogical to compare a celebrity’s choices to regular people.

Times have certainly changed. The ‘scandal’ of Madonna declaring she was going to have a baby alone seems tame by today standards. Even the sex tape scandals of Pam Anderson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian look kind of pedestrian now. I’m not sure if it’s a self-esteem issue or if it’s the caste status we give women in this country, but women making ‘bad choices,’ especially when it comes to status advancement and body objectification, grabs the attention of millions. The stakes jump to what shocks the population; what will make them take notice and claim outrage for a choice a teenage woman makes because of or for celebrity.

That brings us to Farrah Abraham. It wasn’t enough that she was made ‘famous’ for being on the MTV show Teen Mom. No, the now 21 year old has to provide for herself and her baby, as she recently laid out in a recent video she put out. So, to earn money, this teenage mom decided a smart thing to do was to sell her sex tape. Oh, wait, she didn’t have a sex tape so she went to a porn company, got a professional porn actor, shot a porn scene on the premises of the porn company, then pretended there was a ‘leaked’ sex video of her out there. The end result was the ironically titled Farrah Superstar: Backdoor Teen Mom. Even on the box cover of the video the lies continue, when it claims the video was ‘a private tape made public.’

To be honest, while the reality star turned porn star has made some ripples on the internet, this hasn’t reached the buzz of when she waxed her three year old daughter’s eyebrows, which led to a blip on local news stations across the country and even some news cable stations. When the video was officially released a few days ago, Vivid Video claimed the site got more hits than the release of the Kim Kardashian sex video release.  

This woman, to try and cash in on her 15 minutes of fame, thought the best way to extend her fame was to put out a fake sex tape produced by a porn company. She used a somewhat famous male porn star who will soon be seen starring in a mainstream film with Lindsay Lohan. I think a fairly smart person can see the illogic in her decision. As soon as the video is out, if she kept to the plan that the tape was made without her knowing it, the fact that a porn star is in the video would put doubt to her story. While we can look back and see the error of her plan, she did get one million dollars from the porn company. I just learned she made close to another million from a weight loss company, so this woman earned close to two million dollars from a fake sex tape.

I would like people to think about this incident from all angles. Don’t look at this just as a scandalous sex story, or a quest for fame story. I have seen the comments on sites where people call her a slut, whore and worse. I have seen where people have said she is the downfall of civilization. I looked at this issue and wondered to myself how this woman could think she could get away with this scam, but in the end she’s getting two million dollars for this. You can’t make that money at McDonalds. I don’t make that money at my job. Even if you want to think this woman is a terrible mother with no values, she does deserve to provide for her child and for herself. Two million, and let’s put the figure at one million after taxes and other fees, is a good amount of money for starting a new life.

The big problem people face in a situation like Farrah Abraham is we give bad training in the home, bad training in school and people are willing to exploit them. People want to blame Farrah for her decision but close to a million people have gone to the Vivid Video website to look at her sex video. Before that, she was on the cover of many magazines across the country. She got on the covers of the magazines because she was on a ‘reality show’ called Teen Moms on MTV, which purported to show young people how difficult it was to be a teenage mother. What we have to get clear in our minds is that at the beginning, there was a network that put out a casting call for young teenage mothers that eventually paid them very little money. As anyone who watches reality shows could tell you, once they got on TV they went from regular people to ‘celebrity.’ We can joke about them being real celebrities, but how many people, in real life, get their lives taped for month, get interviews, get flown to places to appear on TV for interviews, then become fodder for magazines?

It was reported in one article that Farrah craved the fame she got from the show and the reason why she did the tape was to get more attention. I don’t think that’s too far removed from the truth because the public is given these stories of young people plucked from obscurity, examined like a traffic accident, then the subjects are tossed aside when the show is over. We don’t think about how that much attention can affect someone, especially considering the people mostly picked for reality shows are attention starved in the first place. They don’t think of the consequences of being on a reality show. They think about the fame and the money, and truthfully the money isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things. Even with Farrah’s one to two million dollar payout, Vivid Video will make at least $5 and up to $95 for each person who signs up to see the video. At the very least, right now the company has made 5 million dollars at $5 a pop. Magazines have sold hundreds of thousands of copies when any of the teen moms have been on the cover. MTV makes millions from advertisers from the shows.

The sad part of this exploitation is the companies get off clean. Sure, there may be some articles that talk about how bad it might be that the reality people are exploited, but for the most part nothing happens to them. It’s the antics of the ‘stars’ that get the attention. Every drunken brawl, every plucked baby eyebrow and every sex tape is scrutinized by the public. The reality star is a bad mother, a bad role model. We look at them with scorn. We mock them. Yet, while we complain about the bad behavior of the Jersey Shore cast, as an example, MTV brought us Buckwild, another group of bad behaving teenagers. Many still care about Snookie and her baby, as she is still arriving at events and getting magazine attention.

To me, the real tragedy of Farrah Abraham and her sex tape is it underscores the lack of real options people without means have in this country, especially women. She would never had received a million dollars in her life if she used her brains to get ahead in life. I don’t mean to imply she’s stupid, but as everyone from Pam Anderson to Kim Kardashian has taught women, a sex tape can lead to fame and fortune. The public can pretend they are ashamed of what she did, can claim they are concerned about how this will affect her daughter and her parents, but a good number of people paid for the video. When the subsequent interviews come out, they will tune into the TV or read the articles in the magazines. We have set a pattern so the next reality star will realize the way to continue the fame is to release a sex tape also. We don’t care as much about the consequences as we think because we want to see the traffic accident.