WHAT THEN?

Yesterday I arrived home a bit tired. Had been on travel all the previous week, the weekend flew by on wings and Monday was filled with paper and red ink after not having been at my desk in ten days. Walking in I knew there was enough food for dinner, so my goal was to sit very still for a bit and watch a bit of television.
Usually my TV drug of choice is court shows /news programs but yesterday I decided to go the lifetime, chick TV route.

In doing so, I happened upon Basketball Wives on VH1. I had heard about it, knew the premise, several lovely wives, girlfriends, fiancés of Bballers had gotten together and created a reality type show based on their reality as women in love with ballers.
Before going in I knew the women would be lovely, dressed in designer wear, jeweled and such. However, I was a bit surprised that they weren’t all late teens, early twenties, many were on the far side of 30, and lovely nonetheless.
So I watched with fascination, there was much wine drinking, talking about the men in their lives who had left them, cheated on them, left them penniless, et al and even some of the men were there for my perusal. Mostly there were lovely, mostly, Black and Hispanic women being mean to each other. Lots of talking behind backs and the like, also, a few fisticuffs and much cussing and use of the F word. Ummph. Pure mindless entertainment, right?

After watching it, I wasn’t so sure, all I could do was wonder, what is the message being sent to young women and what and how do these lovely women see their futures. What happens when they are no longer young, beautiful and nubile? What then?
Many of them have money from their X’s and businesses of their own, but what happens when the shine wears off and the next crop of beauties come along. In their quiet moments do they think of this? It sure did make me think, of all the young lovely girls who are smart but because someone has told them how beautiful or fine they are, they aspire to the finer things in life through the men they meet.

I have seen this play out so many times. In their twenties and thirties, the men line up in droves wanting her on his arm. He will even spring for baubles, rent, nails, or just straight up cash. But, somewhere along the way, usually as she ages, he or they are no longer around or interested and in many instances she is left wondering what happened or filled with enough regret to fill an oversized designer swimming pool. What then? Is she comforted by the memories, the stuff she has accumulated or is she left wondering how things would be if she had made different choices?

Angelia