The Editor's Mess

Yesterday a jury awarded Erin Andrews $55 million because someone took nude pictures of her and this morning Kim Kardashian gave it away for free, less any additional ad revenue I suppose from the boost in twitter followers.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Kim should’ve held out for more money.  This from someone who would monetize her skin scrapings if there was an effective way to catch them.

She wasn’t the only one leaving money on the table.  For example, also yesterday, a woman shut down a major highway in Houston because she was dancing naked on top of a semi-truck.  Again, without any possibility of a paycheck, she danced joyously atop the big rig, entertaining nowhere near Kardashian amounts of guys, for over two solid hours.  She made no ad revenue and, at least as of this writing, no law suit in the works against the highway department.   She’s definitely not aiming high enough.

A lot happens in sexual politics in 24 hours

A news search for “naked” had 54,500,000 hits.  Not all of them were women.  Like this guy in Kazakhstan, for instance, who locals unimaginatively nicknamed “the naked one,” which hopefully sounds more cool in Kazakhstani.  He made his debut on social media as he strolled through the freezing cold, stopped in a local city administration building and later did a little light banking.  Not only did he not stop any traffic or make any money doing it, barely anyone acknowledged his lack of clothing.

Seems like a double-standard to me.  If we are ever really going to have equality between the sexes, we must at least evolve to the point where a naked man causes AT LEAST as much social media havoc, ad revenue and traffic congestion as a naked woman.  How else are we to measure social progress?