I ran across this quote a few moments ago from Tara Reid just after watching an interview on The View with Ashley Dupre, the former escort who was seeing then Governor of New York Mark Spitzer.

"I've been OK now for the last five or six years but people only show old pictures which is so unfair and that's part of the reason why I did the Playboy shoot - to show the world this is me and this is what I look like."

I don’t know if I’m just noticing it but it seems some people make bad public choices for the wrong reason. When Dupre was on The View she was promoting a sex column she’s doing for the New York Post. A lot of her interview had her talking about being seen ‘by the public’ in a bad light and wanting to show she is different than the public perception. She was asked an interesting question about why she decided to stay in the public light, especially with a sex column. Her answer was she had a lot of things she wanted to do (mostly entertainment stuff like music and being famous) and she couldn’t just hide in the corner.

Her comment and the quote Tara Reid gave made me wonder how media obsessed are we and how that skews our self-worth. Tara Reid, by her comment, thinks its unfair people show old pictures of her she wants to get naked for Playboy? She says this as if it’s a logical thing to say. Dupre wants to pursue her entertainment career and decides to do a sex column? Sure, the two women are capitalizing on what got them famous, but don’t pretend there’s some higher code your following on this. Dupre, in the interview, kept talking about her lawyer or when she talked to her lawyer. Reid has an agent she goes to for advice. I have to wonder if their pockets have something to do with these women going out and doing things which will only magnify the very situations they say they want to move past.

Any jobs Dupre gets in the near future will probably be based on her notoriety, not talent. The New York Post job wasn’t given to her because she has any degree on the subject of sex and relationships. She acknowledged that herself on The View. She was hired because she was a famous call girl. I can’t remember a Tara Reid movie, but she feels getting nude for Playboy will jump start her career.

Just as a side note, can anyone name an actress in the past 10 years who has become a star or reignited their career from appearing nude in Playboy? In the 70s or mid 80s there are some who were met with some success doing this but I can’t recall anyone recently this has happened to. Women are still sold on the notion that taking it off for Playboy can gain interest in their career when all it really does is allow men like myself to see then naked.