SWF: DUI

I don't know what to make of the recent news reports of various young, white female celebrities with reputations for partying into all hours of the night, and getting arrested for public intoxication and drunken driving. I won't mention the names of those young women, because they're all over the news - you just can't miss them, because nary a week can go by without SOME mention of one of them.

First, what is driving these young women to such behavior? They each have an enormous amount of wealth, and they are all very attractive. If any one of them were motivated enough, they could use their physical comeliness and wealth to be a great influence for good, and be highly visible role models for young girls. Right now, these wealthy young women ARE role models for young girls, but for all the wrong reasons. So again, why? Why are they wasting their lives with such behavior? The short answer seems to be "because they can".

Being young, beautiful, and wealthy seems to be the only excuse for them to indulge in wretched excesses. While this may seem "cool" to some people, for most of us, it just comes across as wasteful and pathetic. It certainly does so to me. I'll admit that I don't know what it's like to be so wealthy that how you appear in public is not a concern to you, so I can't relate to what sorts of pressures that they're going through, but many of their income bracket can also be that wealthy without indulging in excesses solely because they can.

However, there are no doubt wealthy young women of other races who likewise indulge in this way. Why don't we hear about them? There are also wealthy young men of all races who indulge in excesses. So, why does the news seem largely focused on wealthy young white women? Is there some sort of perverse fascination in seeing them in drunken stupors? Is there some sort of "princess in excess" turn-on in reporting on these women?

While only these women can be blamed for engaging in their behavior, the news does not help in CONSTANTLY telling us "what they're doing now". I think that reporting on their behavior only feeds their egos as well as making it look like what they're doing is "cool". I think that with less reporting on their behavior, we would at least keep them from setting a bad example for young girls.

This is not to say that the news shouldn't be reporting on these young women - just that they need to stop being so obsessive about reporting on them. The behavior of these young women is bad enough, but the obsessive news reporting only makes the problem worse. There's reporting to inform the public, and there's the form of reporting that's almost voyeuristic, and that's what a lot of these reportings have become.

They could at least keep these kinds of stories in the entertainment sections of newspapers and other forms of media oriented toward celebrity news. That's what they're there for. I, for one, am tired of seeing these young women splashed all over the front page and as the lead story in Internet news sites. If they want to throw their lives away in this manner, then that's their problem - just spare the rest of us having to see the results!