It’s a rare occurence when our typically shock-obsessed media displays a touch of class. Earlier this month, when it was revealed (courtesy of everyone’s favourite sensationalist scandal-breaker, The Drudge Report) that Prince Harry was serving on the front lines of Afghanistan, many were also surprised to find out that the British media—from The Times to the multitudes of tabloids—had known about his deployment for over two months but agreed to keep it quiet so Harry could serve without becoming a priority target for Taliban operatives. As soon as the story broke, Harry was pulled back to England, having enjoyed being an average soldier.
It’s nice to see human decency from the media, who realized that certain stories should be hushed because publishing them would have near-universal negative consequences. Unfortunately, any nice cred the media gained from keeping mum on Harry’s deployment melted away this week.
Everyone loves an inflatable scandal, and moral crusader Eliot Spitzer’s sexcapades were sensationalistic schadenfreude. It was almost too good to be true—the Governor of New York, the golden boy of anti-corruption vigilantism, who had personally busted up prostitution rings, was caught employing a sex worker.
Pundits were quick to condemn Spitzer, pity his family, and call for his resignation, but there was an elephant in the room—the high-class sex worker Spitzer hired. For two days, the Emperor’s Club’s “Kirsten” was a caricature to the world. A whorish homewrecker, known only through wiretapped phone conversation, she took thousands of dollars from a respected politician and family man, did unspeakable things with him, and treated it all as a casual business operation. She was praised, condemned, and imagined in a thousand different ways by a thousand different water-cooler news analysts. She was purely a creation of our imagination as an accessory of Spitzer’s crimes—and she should have stayed that way.
Then, on March 12, the New York Times, arguably the U.S.’s most respectable paper, published a link to Kirsten’s Myspace profile. The article identified Kirsten as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a 22-year-old aspiring singer in New York. Instantly, millions of people had full access to Dupré’s entire biography. The next day, the same three pictures of her were splashed on front pages worldwide. Some respected columnists identified her as “Spitzer’s Whore.” Very few gave her the slightly more dignified title of “sex worker.” Most papers identified her as a prostitute, treating her in the most patronizing way imaginable, mocking her musical aspiration, describing her sound as “quaint” and “silly.”
Regardless, thanks to the Times and others, Dupré will now forever be degraded as Spitzer’s sex worker. Regardless of whether you think the sex trade is right or wrong, there’s a reason that the Emperor’s Club does its best to keep its employees anonymous: the sex trade is one that is looked down upon by the majority of America. From here on in, anyone who hits on Dupré—and trust me, there will be lots of piggish catcalls—will do so with certain expectations. Other moral crusaders will likely refuse to associate with her. If she decides to eventually have children, there’s no doubt that they’ll be ridiculed for being the children of a sex worker.
Dupré’s media exposure isn’t all bad—it’s likely to land her a record deal with thousands of supporters on Myspace. But she’s also gained the condemnations of countless more.
The media’s brush has painted Dupré into a corner, and while I certainly hope for the opposite, the stigma will not go away. To many, Dupré will always be “Spitzer’s Whore.”
