Rachel Uchitel, Elena Kagan, and Our Double Standard about Sex as Savvy Career Move

Has it always been this way? For some reason, the career advancement of a serious, intellectual woman -- Elena Kagan, just for instance -- can be jeopardized over mere rumors about a very private life she prefers for whatever reason to keep private. Yet for gals like Michelle McGee or Rachel Uchitel, dicey sexual behavior is a sure-fire career enhancer.

Yes, broadcast a sex tape or publish naughty stripper photos and you're on your way; thus are gals who've done nothing more than be blessed with tight abdominals and a proclivity for shaking what God (or a surgeon) gave 'em celebrated with book deals, movie rights -- and set on a quick and dirty path to cheap stardom, a catapult into infamy that every now and then becomes real fame.

Let's face it: America thinks pretty fondly of the women in the latter category. Naughty, naughty, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

But the women in the first category? Apparently, they scare this country something fierce. This tedious, ancient categorizing does have a modern twist, because the "bad" girls aren't stoned to death, but pelted with offers even as they are judged. Yet the whole exercise is still a means of control, of forcing women into boxes, of saying it's OK to be a sex toy, because at least that's non-threatening. But to be independent women, especially ones not tied to a family or a man, well, that we can't embrace.

It's fear, surely, that has made it permissible to bash a woman on rumors that her unmarried status made her a (gasp!) lesbian. I'm referring, of course, to the two most recent nominees to the Supreme Court. Sonia Sotomayor's ex-fiancée was trotted out again and again to prove her heterosexual bona fides. Elena Kagan doesn't have such a man in the background, so we've dragged out old roommates who lamely give quotes about this brilliant lawyer's dating career.

Contrast that with the goodies heaped upon Michelle McGee, the tattoo model who slept with Jesse James, Sandra Bullock's ex, and who is now using her infamy to raise her own profile, promote her image, pick up gigs, and publicly wrestle porn stars (true). Or upon Tiger Woods' alleged "first" mistress, Rachel Uchitel, who the New York Daily News reports has signed up to pose for Playboy. Or even the new Miss USA, Rima Fakih, who has been outed for pole dancing. What will happen to them? A bit of extra cash up front and, if they're the rare lucky one, a long march to respectability, like the one Vanessa Williams was able to pull off. (Williams, most will remember, was the first African-American Miss America -- who was forced to give up her crown when naughty photos of her were sold to Penthouse. Ultimately the "Ugly Betty" star is probably better off for the notoriety. I mean, how many other Miss America winners can you even name?)

We live in a deeply misogynist, hypocritical era. On the one hand, women who live conventional lives -- husband, baby, picket fence -- are penalized, slipping behind peers in their fields, losing crucial years to diapers and spit-up. They miss a meeting because of the school play, they pass up the trip to London to breast feed one more month, they lose out because our maternity and family leave policies leave much to be desired.

Yet those women who either never found Mr. Right, or who simply make a calculated assessment and decide they'll take a more traditionally male path -- career first, family maybe, someday, or never -- are penalized, too. And isn't it hypocritical, then, that we gawk at and reward the playmates and beauty queens and golfer girlfriends who flaunt it all, using meaningless sex and sex acts to promote their careers? We want sex from women, but only as we define it.