Respect For The Ladies

“She must not swing her arms as though they were dangling ropes; she must not switch herself this way and that; she must not shout; and she must not, while wearing her bridal veil, smoke a cigarette.”
- Emily Post

I have been on hiatus from writing for over a year, mainly due to the business of life, children and a career. The life of a woman in today’s society has become full of expectations, responsibilities and assumptions. Not that these expectations were never there. But the assumptions and expectations of today’s modern woman have changed over time. Due to pressures by the media, society, friends, family members, women are now not only expected to keep house, keep kids, keep a husband (or partner), work full-time (or some time) but also look beautiful, be stress-free and make a casserole like Rachael Ray.

So, with all this pressure to be perfect (which we cannot be naïve enough to believe that any of us doesn’t follow this pressure at least some of the time) I can’t help but sit here and feel completely insulted by what is happening with the commentary and virtual striping of Janay Palmer. If you don’t know who that is by name, let’s discuss her for a moment. Janay has a communications degree from Westchester Community College. She is the mother of toddler Rayven. She maintains a home and takes care of her famous athletic husband in any way that she can. With the fame of a celebrated husband, comes more scrutiny than any of us commoners could possibly ever understand, not to mention that she and her husband have a tumultuous relationship.

This blog entry is not written to excuse anyone’s behavior or look for sympathy for anyone…I want to discuss the reality of a situation that has caused a very serious issue to come to light in a very insulting manner. The reality of life for Janay Palmer Rice is that she fought with her husband in public and unfortunately lost. She lost the battle to keep her relationship issues under wraps, she lost a fight with her husband, and she has to deal with the fact that her once positively famous husband is now negatively unemployed. Was the situation ugly? Absolutely. But, don’t forget that in a world of cloak and dagger perception, the media can lead us to believe whatever is convenient. The true reality, is known only to the Rice couple themselves. While this reality is something that happens to many spouses out there every single day, due to the celebrity status of Ray and Janay Rice, their spousal spats have not only raised the issue of domestic violence but have become the talk and ridicule of public television.

It is the ridicule that I find to be completely insulting. Referring specifically to the CNN commentator’s ridicule of Janay as well as the makeup websites now looking to put black-eye makeup on women as a somehow, “cool” image to portray…like a scar of courage…I am sickened by the thought. As a relatively successful woman, I never made it anywhere with a black eye badge of courage on my face. Nor have I ever taken advice from talking heads on television.

Folks, Reality TV and the celebrities that occupy reality TV have poisoned our minds. We cannot tell reality from fake any longer and the side effect is we are losing motivated, caring, loving and grounded members of society. What happened to sitting back and considering both sides of this story. How did we become so immature that we cannot have a real discussion about domestic violence and the emotional impact of abuse? Or even the perception of women and abuse on television? Perhaps society now is not mature enough to see the importance of such an issue. In my eyes, I am insulted that you believe a woman of Janay’s stature should sit there and allow the media to bully her in such a way. Being married to a professional athlete, Janay can and would have been a role model for other women. The muckraking that we find ourselves so entrenched in is despicable and we need to stand up and start questioning where we find the line cannot be crossed.

The bottom line is that with the recent stories of domestic violence in the news, if we are not mature enough to handle the stories of domestic violence and grasp the lessons that can be gleaned from them, then surely we must not insult the women affected in these cases because we don’t understand them. While society puts a lot of assumptions on women, we should consider applying respect for the personal situations we don’t understand and recognize the women that have unending courage to get through them.