The Sexual Education of a Beauty Queen

by Taylor Marsh

  Vergara’s fierce independence blows the doors off of traditional stereotypes and rules that we don’t need anymore. Anything that expands options for women is a positive advancement.

  One thing we’re all facing is the possibility of a second-chance relationship or marriage. The first try at love doesn’t always stick or last. Some people marry young when they’re not ready and by forty are ready for another try. This means luggage. Some parts of it are harder to handle than others.

  When it became public that Tiger Woods, the famed golfer, and Lindsey Vonn, World Cup champion skier, were a couple, the tabloid world went crazy. “Dangerous Romance,” screamed the US Weekly April 2013 headline. “She was warned!”

  The stories exploded on March 18, 2013, when Woods and Vonn admitted they were dating, then posted four photos of themselves together on the Internet.

  It was about the same time Woods reclaimed his number one golfer in the world status. When it happened, Vonn tweeted simply, “Number 1!”

  Of course, Ms. Vonn felt compelled to also make a statement, where else but on Facebook: “I guess it wasn’t a well-kept secret but yes, I am dating Tiger Woods. Our relationship evolved from a friendship into something more over these past few months and it has made me very happy. I don’t plan on addressing this further as I would like to keep that part of my life between us, my family and close friends. Thank you for understanding and your continued support! xo LV.”

  The chattering classless predictably bombarded the comments section, warning Vonn of the inevitable to come. It does no good to be cynical about love, because people often beat the odds.

  The sports megastars met at a 2012 Tiger Jam charity fundraiser in Las Vegas. At the time, Lindsey Vonn was going through what’s been described in the press as a brutal divorce. Woods and Vonn started dating off the radar, meeting clandestinely.

  When Vonn had her epic skiing crash in February 2013, Woods sent his jet for her, so she could quickly travel to get what everyone hopes was the career-saving operation. The speculation about their romance started churning immediately, with TMZ getting the photo of Vonn boarding the jet.

  Tiger Woods told Vonn everything, the whole sordid story of his so-called sexual addiction, which brought personal and professional humiliation, as well as the complete collapse of his marriage. The event shook Woods’ golf standing, as well as his allies, the conflicts ravaging his concentration and professional prowess. The Associated Press in 2012 estimated Woods had dropped $22 million, or 30% of his revenue, by losing several key endorsements, but he was still at the top of golf’s earning elite.

  Does anyone believe a woman as worldly as Lindsey Vonn wasn’t aware of most of the dirty details? The salaciousness of the events was front-page, television and Internet news for months. Nothing is so deliciously seductive for the American public as a mighty sports hero being taken down to size through his own actions. The women involved were all too eager to help, jumping in to reveal the dirty details and sordid secrets of their sexual romps with Tiger Woods, so they could bask in their fifteen minutes of fame.

  There is no reason for Vonn to think that Woods would risk another worldwide sex scandal. For one thing, his kids are old enough to be close witnesses this time. People can change after being humbled. When they’re humiliated publicly, it’s even worse. That Woods won’t get another chance to remake himself is obvious.

  Vonn’s own marriage is also part of this story. It was making her miserable, even if on the outside everything looked great. The tabloids detailed a “controlling husband,” a man who was her manager and coach, whom she wanted to get away from for “months, years.” Vonn herself simply told People magazine in 2012 that “Nothing bad happened, but there was just unhappiness.” She recounted to People the debilitating depression she had suffered because of the troubles in her marriage, but which had also been an issue since she was a teenager.

  When you peel back the notoriety of the two people involved, Woods and Vonn dating makes perfect sense. Who could possibly understand the intense training and dedication more than a person who has to do it herself? However, the number one golfer in the world paired with the number one skier in the world makes for significant time apart, which will likely be as much of a challenge as the luggage Tiger Woods brings to the relationship. Maybe the seasonal differences in their careers will allow them to fit their professional lives together.

  This is an extreme relationship case, obviously, but the faith Lindsey Vonn has placed in Tiger Woods, as they attempt to be together and make their relationship work, is something every woman must do when she meets a man with a complicated past. Vonn’s public embrace of Woods takes even more courage, because of the involvement of the international press. It didn’t take any time before media outlets were jumping on how the relationship could affect her endorsements with Under Armour and Red Bull, in addition to Rolex, which they both represent. There’s no reason her endorsement deals should suffer at all.

  Businessweek talked to an athletic branding expert, Anthony Fernandez, who offered this assessment: “I don’t think her price tag will go up. But she’ll definitely become more valuable to her existing sponsors. She was a name to begin with, but now that she’s dating Woods, she’s entered another league.”

  Woods and Vonn have a lot in common. They’re also older — he’s thirty-eight at this writing; she’s twenty-nine. They’ve been through the ringer, which goes double for Woods. She’s already been introduced to his kids, so it’s obvious it’s serious. After their pasts have been shared and digested, which it has by now, the rest is simply up to them. It’s now about who they are with one another, the value they place on the relationship and the commitment of each person to keep working on themselves. We all have demons, and if we ignore them they won’t go away, they just get bigger.

  When Tiger Woods first faced the media after his sex scandal humiliation, he handled it very, very poorly. It’s obvious he learned from that mistake or, at the very least, got good advice, so he and Lindsey Vonn are ahead at this point. Together, they also pulled off beating the tabloids, by conspiring as a couple to release their own photos when they made their relationship public. Tiger Woods told the New York Times: “We wanted to limit the stalk-a-razzi and all those sleazy websites that are out there following us. I’ve had situations where it’s been very dangerous for my kids.… We basically devalued the first photos.”

  It was a stroke of genius. There can be little doubt that effort alone made Woods and Vonn closer, bonding them as a power-couple that has decided to go on the offense, thoughtfully presenting their own public image together. Relationships are difficult enough in private, but the pressure on Woods and Vonn is incalculable. If they can steal some normalcy amid their high-flying careers they just might enjoy themselves and get a chance to see what’s really between them.

  With more people having second marriages and serial monogamous relationships, the possibility you’ll meet up with the perfect guy who has no past is between slim and nil. What matters is the full honesty with which he describes his past failures, including moral lapses. When he’s telling you his story, perhaps about a prior marriage, does he accept blame? Does he admit getting help for an addiction? Does she say she works daily on her depression?

  Lindsey Vonn, if the relationship progresses, will also face what many women do today, which is taking on the role of the second female in the life of her new man’s children, maybe eventually the duties of a stepmother. Few responsibilities are more complex.

  Some women come into a relationship with a man who has children after the kids are grown, so their involvement is minimal. It can be tricky, especially when the divorce is bad, which I’ve seen close up. It’s not a situation for the young or inexperienced. There are countless books on how to handle the situation, which comes in all forms, but nothing quite prepares you, especially when you fall in love with a man who is also wounded. Read up and make sure you’re ready. Spend time with the children involved, but also k
now what will be expected of you. Marrying someone divorced with children requires a mature person who is fully secure and knows how to set boundaries. Nothing quite prepares you for the hell-on-wheels ex-wife or ex-husband, who hasn’t let go and has issues to burn. It’s as serious as it gets, and you shouldn’t go into it lightly.

  It doesn’t matter your age; relationships are the dessert of life, with the urge to find a spectacular connection always on our minds. Martha Stewart proved in April of 2013 that if you’re healthy, vibrant and single, even famous women find using online dating sites a way to meet men. In an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, Stewart said she’s looking for someone “youngish…, tallish…, really smart,” and successful, because “that would be important to him.” She’s exactly right, because men can have very sensitive egos about money, which must be respected.

  Martha Stewart’s profile on Match.com states, “Yes, it’s really me.” She is looking for a man between the ages of fifty and seventy. At seventy-one, she looks fantastic, with her economic status allowing many options, especially if a man is secure. This is part of her terrific page, which Match.com chief executive Sam Yagan helped her compile: “Someone who’s intelligent, established and curious; and who relishes adventure and new experiences as much as I do. Someone who can teach me new things. A lover of animals, grandchildren and the outdoors. Young at heart.” Oh, and Martha wants someone “spiritual, but not religious.” Amen to that.

  One other thing in Ms. Stewart’s profile is something I can confirm because I’ve seen it myself: “I’ve always been a big believer that technology, if used well, can enhance one’s life. So here I am, looking to enhance my dating life.” Online dating can work and trying it beats sitting around and wondering.

  There is a lot of advice on the web that has gone from “girls should never say yes to sex on the first date” to “never say no to sex, ever, if you’re in a relationship.” Other columns talk about what a man goes through when he hears no to sex. In a relationship there is one reaction, while before the relationship it all depends on the situation and the development between the two people. Sometimes on the first date, sex just comes naturally. Sometimes sex on the first date means you never hear from the person again. Connection between the people and circumstances of the sexual encounter are what matter. But detailed sex news still assaults us all daily, reminding us that even in the best marriages things can go off course.

  When former Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner started sexting provocative pictures of himself to women, it ended with his secret sex life being exposed, which is what anyone faces today. The risks Weiner took, weighed against what he had to lose, made his reckless exhibitionism look even more extreme once it was featured on The Daily Show by his friend Jon Stewart, a situation that embarrassed them both. Lisa Weiss, one of the women who received Weiner’s sexy photos and then chose to expose him publicly, ended up apologizing to him on Facebook in September 2012. Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin has forgiven him. His run for mayor of New York City was to be his rehabilitation tour.

  It began through slowly building his approval rating with voters, with it looking like he just might be able to make a comeback. Then his sexting with Sydney Leathers hit the tabloid press and went viral, a dalliance that happened after he was forced to resign from Congress. Dragging New Yorkers and everyone else back into the tawdry details of yet another X-rated Weiner show. Only this time, the woman he’d chosen had her eyes on cashing in on the notoriety her virtual tryst had brought her, quickly accepting an offer to star in a hard-core XXX-rated Vivid movie titled Weiner and Me.

  In an interview with GQ, published in November 2013, Anthony Weiner talks about what his wife Huma Abedin has had to go through and how she doesn’t deserve it. That Abedin has been a trusted aide of Hillary Clinton for years, and considered family by the Clintons, made the coverage even more intense.

  Even knowing his wife is “more sensitive” about these things, Weiner still couldn’t stop himself. “I’m just an empty, soulless vessel, so it doesn’t hurt me as much,” Weiner told GQ, which was described as being delivered with “an utter lack of humor.” The masochistic persona revealed through this statement seems to come from an exhibitionist who’s content to wallow in humiliation, otherwise why continue to give interviews? The self-destructive behavior of Weiner’s alter ego, Carlos Danger, provided an outlet for his fetish. Where’s that release to go now? Reading his rhetorical self-flagellation in GQ, there’s no evidence that he’s healed or that Carlos Danger has been put down, only that he’s now speaking through Weiner publicly. A woman choosing to stay in the vortex of this tortured inferno is in a very precarious place.

  When Gawker.com caught very married Republican Representative Chris Lee sending a shirtless photo of himself to Craigslist’s “Women Seeking Men” forum, and then uncovered embarrassing emails he’d sent to a girl who answered his ad, Lee ended up losing his seat in Congress.

  Neither of these episodes involved actual sex, unlike former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who also tried a political comeback running for New York City comptroller in 2013, but was turned away by voters, too. Spitzer’s marriage came to an end soon afterward.

  When a woman gets caught sending naked selfies, it’s seen as something even more scandalous, even in these liberated times. It’s also dangerous. It’s just that we rarely hear of this happening to a professional woman, let alone one in politics, which is actually unthinkable.

  The self-destructing-photo program Snapchat had an estimated 5 million active monthly users in April 2013, according to the Guardian, who in November 2013 estimated that Snapchat likely had “around 26 million U.S. users.” That number was based on the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which reported in October 2013: “This is the first time we have measured Snapchat use. Some 9% of cell phone owners use the app. It is especially popular among cell owners ages 18-29, 26% of whom use the app. Among all smartphone owners, 12% use Snapchat.”

  Snapchat deletes photos ten seconds after you send them, with the evidence deleted from the servers once the photos are opened. Or maybe not. Snaphack, a new app available through iTunes, allows you to save a photo or video, without the sender knowing it. The details from Huffington Post, who tried it and found it worked, from October 2013: “You download Snaphack app and log in with your Snapchat name and password. When someone sends you a photo or video via Snapchat, open it through Snaphack rather than through Snapchat and you’ll have it permanently in Snaphack.” Facebook made an offer of $3 billion for Snapchat, but were rebuffed, which the Wall Street Journal reported in November 2013. Facebook hoped to utilize Snapchat to attract teens, but founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy held out for a higher offer.

  We’re bound to get bored with this stuff eventually and ricochet back to being satisfied with a little less risk in our communications, right? It’s already happened with teens and twenty-somethings, who are turning to messenger apps. It would be a good start if people didn’t use social media as a confessional, with the hard rule and discipline to never drink and sext, post on Facebook, or blast out racy selfies when you’re bombed.

  America still hasn’t quite grown up.

  As far as our culture is concerned, even as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, age is the arbitrary measure of maturity. We look to a number that jettisons every girl into womanhood, instead of her own internal signals, which go off long before society wants to acknowledge. Parents are too petrified to consider that girls become sexualized before puberty, involuntarily. The thought of mommy’s or daddy’s little girl getting it about sex all on her own just as she enters her teens, even if the mechanics and complications still mystify, is too horrifying to contemplate, even if it’s true. So, it’s no wonder parents find themselves scared to death about the virtual and social media world that confronts a girl’s independence and confidence daily, just as her body starts screaming at her.

  Today’s generation of girls is different
, even if parents don’t want to admit or accept it. The important thing to make clear is that you’re always there. Giving girls more respect, inside boundaries, might make them more willing to come to you before things go horribly off course.

  Marie Osmond, a Mormon and multitalented singer and actress, wrote about her lesbian daughter in her memoir, The Key Is Love: My Mother’s Wisdom, A Daughter’s Gratitude. Huffington Post covered the story in late March 2013, and on same-sex marriage, Osmond is quoted saying to ABC’s Diane Sawyer: “I believe in [my daughter’s] civil rights, as a mother. I think that my daughter deserves everything that she desires in life. She’s a good girl. She’s a wonderful child. I don’t think God made one color flower. I think he made many.”

  I didn’t wake up one day and choose to be heterosexual, so I have never understood why people think gays and lesbians get to determine their own sexuality. A person is born gay. It’s not a choice. When you know someone who is gay, and I know many, it educates you. Whether it’s Marie Osmond realizing her daughter is gay, or you making that realization about your own child, maybe even yourself, it becomes obvious very quickly that we are who we are, because we’re born a unique individual from the start.

  Everyone in America has the legal right to love, marry and pursue happiness. We also have the right to choose to simply live together for all eternity.

  Marriages and relationships come in every form.

  Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell have been together since 1983, have raised four kids, and remain unmarried.

  Jon Hamm, of Mad Men and the movies, and Jennifer Westfeldt, an actress and writer/director, have been happily unmarried since 1997. Hollywood.com quotes Hamm as telling Parade magazine in 2012, “I don’t have the marriage chip, and neither of us have the greatest examples of marriages in our families. But Jen is the love of my life, and we’ve already been together four times longer than my parents were married.”