Misogyny, Lies, and the Carrie Prejean Nude Photo Scandal
May 6, 2009 by Jenn Q. Public
Filed under Commentary
By Jenn Q. Public, originally published on JennQPublic.com.
Miss California pageant winner Carrie Prejean is gorgeous, opinionated, passionate, and conservative.
It’s that last quality that really sticks in the craws of her liberal detractors.
And so, they set out to destroy her. Belittling her for her views on marriage didn’t work. Calling her filthy names didn’t do the trick. And mocking her decision to get breast implants, and gasp, have someone else foot the bill, seems to have fallen flat, so to speak.
It was only a matter of time before they tried to shame her into oblivion for her loose morals and unholy, sinful ways. Enter the mildest nudie pic never to grace the pages of a men’s magazine.
The photo, which I won’t embed here as she may have been underage when it was taken, is of Carrie Prejean striking the ubiquitous lingerie model pose found throughout the Victoria’s Secret catalog. She is wearing panties and her arms are strategically placed over her breasts as she bares her naked back and side to the camera. This is the sort of innocuous cheesecake-lite shot found on bus shelter ads and Abercrombie shopping bags everywhere.
It’s also fodder for an all out assault on Carrie Prejean based on some manufactured inconsistency between her opposition to gay marriage and her participation in a questionably racy modeling shoot at age seventeen. Here’s my distillation of this ever-so-feminist logic at work:
Homophobia is totally wrong. Let’s see how MissJugs4Jesus likes the taste of a little misogyny!
And yes, “MissJugs4Jesus” was a slur lifted from the blog of a feminist lesbian.
Pam Spaulding, proprietor of Pam’s House Blend and contributor to the liberal feminist blog Pandagon, is absolutely delighted that these photos have surfaced “and the devoted ‘Christian’ is forced to explain herself.” Most of her commenters are equally giddy.
Gay activist John Aravosis also indulged in a bit of slut-baiting:
holier-than-thou religious fundamentalist Bible-thumpers don’t get to flash their breasts for profit and shrug it off as just another youthful indiscretion. You don’t get to lecture me about my morality when your morality is the equivalent of a Playboy centerfold.
Who are the real hypocrites, young Christian women who embrace their sexuality and fight for what they believe, or liberal feminists who brand Carrie Prejean as a slut while they pat themselves on the backs for their progressive stances and evolved views?
Maybe they could hold her down and sew a big ol’ scarlet letter to her scandalously naked back. They could even invite Michael Musto, Keith Olbermann, and Perez Hilton to sling vitriol and vulgarity as they gleefully rub salt in her wounds. That’ll show her!
Matt Lauer, always too enthralled with his own cunning in shaping the news to care about objectivity, attempted to secure the complicity of conservatives in demonizing Carrie Prejean. He used his Today Show report to viciously smear Miss California in the apparent belief that her own supporters would step right up to bat her out of the public sphere. A few excerpts from that report:
Racy photos of the runner up have surfaced, and some say they’ve gone too far. Too far for NBC news to broadcast.
A lie.
I can assure you they were quite inappropriate and certainly not photos befitting a beauty queen.
An unsubstantiated accusation, assuming there really are photos that remain to be seen.
controversial pictures may not sit well with conservative groups
Another blatant attempt to shape the reaction of conservatives without actually interviewing any.
Los Angeles based KTLA went a step further with this fabrication:
The newly surfaced photos are not sitting well with her conservative Christian supporters.
Unsurprisingly, the reporter failed to quote any of these conservative Christians.
Christian social conservative Maggie Gallagher, President of the National Organziation for Marriage, has come to the defense of Carrie Prejean, who appeared in one of the group’s anti-gay marriage ads. She strongly condemned the attacks:
The level of hatred directed at her is astonishing. Even more astonishing is her personal courage and strength of character in the midst of these attacks. Of course Carrie is not perfect. On a personal note, as a former unwed mother, I want to say to Americans: you don’t have to be a perfect person to have the right to stand up for marriage.
Carrie Prejean also defended herself, focusing on the attacks on her faith:
I am a Christian and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos. The photos of me taken as a teenager have been released surreptitiously to a tabloid website that openly mocks me for my Christian faith. I am not perfect and I will never claim to be perfect. But the attacks on me and others who speak in defense of marriage are precisely the kind of intolerant, offensive attacks that I hear some in the gay community say are hurled at them for their opinions. No one should have their opinion silenced through vicious and mean-spirited attacks on one’s character and integrity.
I will continue to support and defend marriage as the honorable institution it is. I will continue to stand with the overwhelming majority of the American people. If this whole experience has taught me anything it is how precious our right to speak freely is, and how we as Americans can never allow anyone or any group to intimidate or threaten us to keep silent.
I happen to disagree with Carrie Prejean on the issue of marriage. I support gay marriage, am against federal marriage amendments, and would like to see the Defense of Marriage Act repealed as long as there are unimpeachable protections in place for religious Americans.
But even though she is my ideological opponent, I won’t lend my implicit support to the idea that Carrie Prejean is a paper doll the angry left can crumple up and discard if they don’t like the way she’s decorated. I can believe that she’s wrong without vomiting forth misogynist insults. I can find her opinions in total disagreement with my own without pretending that a little semi-nude modeling invalidates her moral standing.
Carrie Prejean is being savaged by the left in an effort to discredit her before conservatives. Those disparaging her can’t rattle her on the strength of her convictions, so they hope to undermine her credibility with conservative supporters. But attempts to shame women for flashing a bit of skin are really over the top these days. Most conservatives won’t abandon a professional model who shares their beliefs just because she was caught baring less side boob than I see at the beach. I expect they’ll stick by her even if racier pictures exist.
In other news, with the liberal smear machine targeting another conservative woman, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is enjoying a much needed break this week.
And in breaking news: topless photos of another gay marriage opponent leaked!
Popularity: 1% [?]
I find it so interesting that those who are outspoken and proud about not being Christians seem to think that they know what makes someone a Christian, and what makes someone a “fake” Christian. I’ve seen the term “fake Christian” thrown around a lot lately. It’s applied to a Christian who dares go public with his beliefs, who is also a human. As Christians, we know that God created us with free will. We make good choices sometimes and we make bad choices other times. When we realize the err of our ways, we confess our sins to God and ask for forgiveness. That does not make us “fake Christians.” It makes us practicing Christians. In using the Bible as a guide for what is and is not an acceptable practice, we are not being hypocrites. The fact that some of us have divorced, or posed nude, or had premarital sex does not mean that we lose the right to speak the Bible to others. If we have done things that we know are sinful, we stop doing those things and ask for forgiveness–the sin is erased. We try to better align ourselves with what Christ would have us do in the future. It does not make us damaged, or unworthy of the name Christian.
You wrote a great article here, and I applaud you for it. I think that healthy debate of the issues is a great thing. You acknowledge that Miss California is your polar opposite on the issue of gay marriage. Yet you do not feel the need to question her religious beliefs just to try to prove that you are on the “right” side and she is on the “wrong” side of the issue. It is a sad day in our country when we can’t even speak our minds without being villified.
If you believe the Bible,there is one thing for certain and this is that the Bible says that Christians will be persecuted for their faith. Our country has not had too much persecution of Christians, as it once was a strong tower for Biblical Truth. But in other nations and countries around the world, this flogging of Carrie’s character is mild when compared to what governments and self proclaimed religions do to those who proclaim themselves to be Christian.
Miss California is proud to stand up for her faith in Jesus Christ and though she has been defamed, I believe her testimony helps embolden others to remain firm in their convictions and not waiver in the face of hate.
Martyrdom may not be here on the shores of America, as it is in other nations for Christians living out their faith, but persecution is alive and well in the U.S. of A. and won’t be leaving anytime soon. So stand firm and live out loud!