By Selam Aster

It may be a bad economy for most folks but one thing’s for sure, hoes be winning these days. From Kim Kardashian to Amber Rose to Evelyn Lozada, women with sex tapes and high-profile affairs under their belts have given hope to a new class of social climbers thanks to reality television. Sadly enough, many young girls and women no longer have to aspire to achieving success via education or traditional entrepreneurship.

It was funny at first, seeing these basketball mistresses, strippers turned Flavor of Love contestants, video groupies and sex-tape having, publicity hounds with last names that start with K get some shine on TV. But now, it’s obvious that reality television has degraded society’s standards.

Watching Draya, the resident ex-stripper/groupie, on the Basketball Wives LA show on Vh1, talk about being a career woman dedicated to taking care of her son and her mother as a single mother herself on last night’s reunion special, I couldn’t help but laugh at how she made such a show about “working hard.” I guess this is the new image of working hard; getting a boob job, posing naked for men’s magazines, leaking a sex tape, and having the luck of landing a reality show documenting one’s trivial squabbles with frenemies. Yes, we’re officially in the Kardashian era.

I can’t hate on these women for making their money. No sirree. By all means, do what you gotta do. What I can’t appreciate, however, is how these women, many of which have married into money or capitalized from exposing their assets, praise themselves for “working hard.” The media is no better in terms of feeding into the idea that gold-digging is a sport.

The only message that comes through in the stardom of these women is that with a bit of plastic surgery and a dash of luck, you too may be able to just ditzily stumble onto millions. I’m not a staunch feminist, but I do know that everyone who has ever capitalized off a sex tape or who has invested in marrying a baller cannot be credited with setting a good example.
Since the barrier to entry for the next Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Draya or Superhead is so low, we now have more and more young girls abandoning the idea of education in hopes that they can hit it big with reality television, where the raunchier your past, the better your future seems to be for a potentially short-lived yet lucrative shot at celebrity.

More on Madame Noire!

• 7 Reasons to Date a Geek
• Protecting Your Do — But He Hates Your Headscarf!
• Beyond BMI: Why Black Women Need Fairer Measures of Health
• Oh, The Faux Pas! Celebrities Who Need To Fire Their Stylists
• The Number One Thing Men Find Attractive
• 8 People You Don’t Want to Sit Near on the Way Home for Thanksgiving
• Ratchet News: Cross-Dressing Man Arrested for Injecting Cement into Woman’s Butt