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I’ve been loosely following the whole Coco Austin and Ice T sex tape scandal and I’m not sure if I should feel sad for Coco, and subsequently her husband Ice T, or chalk this up to just a matter of chickens coming home to roost?

I know that there is a delicious irony in seeing a former rapper and self-professed pimp, who made a career of objectifying women including his first wife, now wallow in the same subjugating cess pool he had once championed. However, it is hard for me to celebrate when there is the exploitation of another woman at afoot, even if she is not the beacon of women progression we hope for.

For all intents and purposes, Coco, born Nicole Austin, is the manifestation of everything that is wrong and chauvinistic with our culture. Not only was her entire image birthed out of a desire to appease the male gaze but more specifically, her entire packaging has co-oped and capitalized on a certain bottom heavy aesthetic, which has largely been synonyms with black women. The anomaly of being a white girl with a booty has provided Austin with opportunities that women with dark hues and more genetically natural curves are not afforded, particularly a starring role in a Vegas show. The mainstream sees Austin’s naughty girl routine as bubbly, vivacious and of course, sexay. However those same descriptives are rarely found or used when discussing your average video vixen. In the latter, we are suppose to feel nothing by pity and sympathy for them. Last I checked nobody was offering Karrine “Superhead” Steffans a show anywhere and her sexual posturing is probably more authentic than Austin’s carbon copy in platinum blonde. But I guess when you are white, it will get it done. Hat tip to Jen the Pen…

However the angst over Austin’s hot persona pales in comparison to the sheer ridiculousness that is the Ice-T/Coco’s relationship – or at least the relationship they play out in front of cameras. There is no doubt that the couple loves playing up the whole pimp ho dynamic, And who can blame them? The entire pimp culture has been glamorized through not only Ice T’s music but through films like The Mack and Dolomite. The two have even gone as far as to dress in the attire at a recent award show. But while the Tees revel in the romanticized version of pimping, mainly the bedazzled pimp cups and barely there attire, real life girls (and some boys) are being sold against their wills into prostitution and used as sex slaves. In fact the average age for a girl recruited into the sex trafficking industry is only 12 years old. Fact of the matter is that pimp culture, violence and sexual abuse and manipulation are intertwined. And the sexual domination of mostly women and children by men is probably not the healthiest image you want to promote as man and wife.

This, of course, leads me to the sex tape, which is being shopped around from some rapper, who no one has ever heard of. And perhaps that the point of getting the tape out there. Name recognition, mainly at the expense of a woman, whose own image is clearly not of her own making nor benefit. Case in point, check out how Ice-T responded when he found out about his wife’s Vegas follies. First he publicly chastised his own wife and then he addressed the “haters:”

Don’t worry about me… Worry about earthquakes and hurricanes.. I got this. It’s not about the come up…. It’s all about the comeback!

Everyone with opinions about MY personal life.. Can ‘Eat a Hot Bowl of D-cks’ Check YOUR b-tch.

My wife checks 100k a week….. Worry about your broke ho….. Not your b-tch. Not your concern.

In all this grandstanding and boosting, however, are there any words directed at the guy in question, even after he has threatened Ice T with physical violence? In the end Ice T still gets to maintain his role as the pimp in the situation while Austin, who had to apologize publicly to her husband for her “indiscretions,” bares the brunt of what often befalls those classified as the product. It would seem that it is only cool and respectable when Austin embodied the free-wheeling, sexay girl persona just as long as the beneficiary was Ice T, her husband. But being sexually free and public for herself? Well now, that is just flat out hoe-ish. I guess whoever said pimping wasn’t easy must never thought about what it is like to be the hoe.

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