SELF RESPECT

Recently I wrote about the new movie Fifty Shades of Grey. I also reflected on the fact that couples today aren’t optimistic about finding a partner for life. They have reason to feel this way because statistics seem to support this and their own experience growing up as children of divorce does as well.

It is hard enough to find your footing when you are first on your own. If I were to go by what television tells me, if you are a Virgin at 16 today, there is definitely something wrong with you.

Where you are supposed to have found enough maturity to make so many important and potentially life altering decisions before you are 16, I can’t imagine.

Maybe I was protected as a teenager by a boring (and worn out) school uniform, and poor skin. I suspect though that even as an insecure young girl, I had enough sense and parental guidance to let me grow up a bit more before I started to realize that the world out there had a lot of new, and sometimes strange, experiences beyond those I grew up with.

When Pretty Woman came out in 1990, some people did not go to see it at first because the main character was a Prostitute. Although 'the Hooker with the Heart of Gold', was a stock character in films for years, this one needed to be someone the mainstream audience found attractive enough that they would pay to see her in this role.

At that time parents were still trying hard to teach their daughters to respect themselves and had just realized that, either their children or certainly their friend’s children, were getting divorced after a few years.

Many parents suddenly stopped pushing their young kids into marriage right after they completed their education. In fact, it suddenly seemed living together, or at least, spending more time getting to know each other before marriage, seemed wiser than divorces after a year and a half of marriage.

Today, I hear young girls worrying about their weight when they are 10 years old. Being told someone is taking a Pole Dancing class is no longer shocking and pretty tasteless lingerie is no longer confined to prostitutes.

A story going back to at least 1937 is still being told. It is possible that a Canadian Lord Beaverbrook addressed this to a famous but contentious American émigré and member of the British parliament at a dinner party.

Regardless of its origin, the story is: A man asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars. After she said yes, he then asks if she would have sex with him if he paid her a dollar. The Woman then becomes indignant about being offered a dollar in return for sex and asks the man, what kind of woman he thinks she is. The punch line is, I already know what kind of woman you are, we are now just negotiating the price.

In 1993 Indecent Proposal shocked audiences when a multi-millionaire offered a happy young couple a chance to be given a million dollars if the rich man spends a night with the man’s wife. For audiences to entertain this 'indecent proposal' Hollywood hires Robert Redford, or would want someone equally attractive, and not by some toad with only money to offer in exchange for adultery.

Now Fifty Shades of Grey challenges us to entertain a young couple in their prime, willing to entertain a limited relationship because the creature comforts and lifestyle is a rich one and the perks are those a rich man can offer a young inexperienced university graduate just starting out in life on her own.

Meanwhile, outside of Hollywood in the 'real world' each of us is still required to develop ourselves and grow into self sufficient adulthood. Sometimes we need to begin with how we feel we want our lives to differ from those we experienced while growing up and build our own lives from there.

I consider this a Moral Compass which we develop as we strive to build a life for ourselves. Such a Moral Compass can help us until we have enough experience in life to be able to understand and realistically evaluate the implications and consequences of decisions we are being asked to make as we go out into the world on our own. 

As you get to know yourself better, you develop a pretty good idea about what type of human being you are and what type of person you can live with. This keeps you grounded and in control of yourself and any potentially destructive impulses or peer pressures you might encounter as you begin living on your own.  

A Moral Compass whether based on religious principles, your upbringing at home, community mores and values, healthy self respect or just plain common sense, although especially helpful when you first begin to experience and expand your horizons beyond the one you grew up in, will continue to stand you in good stead, whenever you are faced with unique and difficult decisions, throughout your life.

Basically, a firm foundation and Moral Compass which includes some self discipline and Self Respect doesn’t do you any harm, and in fact, often does you a lot of good.



P.S. More on the subject in the Entertainment News this week:

#1 - This week there is talk of a remake of Pretty Woman. Richard Gere has apparently been asked to play some role in the film but was considered too old to be the lead. Someone said, why not Richard Gere, since men this age are the usual customers for prostitutes anyway? 
#2 Some woman, horrified at the tacit approval of abuse in Fifty Shades of Grey have said they would like to slap the main character/actress for showing so little self respect. The writer would probably say that considering her experience with her 'dominator' she probably has come to like this. Mommy Porn indeed.