By MONROE ROARK
mroark@thecitizennews.com

Get ready, ladies. Your chance for stardom is here.

Actually, by the time you read this it's probably gone. According to a report I heard on the radio this week, Playboy magazine was coming to Atlanta to interviewer prospective, shall we say, participants. It appears that the magazine intends to select Miss July 2002 from the Atlanta pool of applicants.

What a fantastic opportunity. At least, that's what hundreds of young women are undoubtedly thinking right now. Sadly, that's the way most people think when all they're thinking about is immediate gratification and not long-term consequences.

Consider the case of Becky Lynn Gritzke, for instance. She, like many others, is facing many years of answering for a seemingly harmless indiscretion during her college years. As is so typical in this era, she is seeking retribution in the courts, and she has no business doing so.

Ms. Gritzke is suing the producers of the "Girls Gone Wild" videos because she appears in one of their videos as well as a commercial for them. If you watch television into the wee hours of the morning, you may have seen the commercial or one like it.

"Girls Gone Wild" is a series of videos chronicling the naked and drunken escapades of college students and other stupid young adults across the country. Filmed mostly in various spring break hot spots, they are filled with scenes that can only be seen in the TV ads with a bunch of those psychodelic squiggly boxes used by technicians to blur the picture.

It seems that young Becky Lynn took a break from her studies at Florida State University a few years ago to take in the sights and sounds of Mardi Gras. As many of you probably know, it is a time-honored tradition on Bourbon Street for young ladies to display their, ahem, assets by lifting their shirts in exchange for some cheap beads. Wanting to get into the spirit of the occasion, young Becky Lynn did just that.

Imagine her horror when she found out some time later that an enterprising video producer had made her a nationwide star.

I don't know the specifics of her lawsuit, but I'm sure it mentions mental anguish, pain and suffering, and the like.

From a purely economic standpoint, the producer of these videos is a genius. He's probably a Hugh Hefner wannabe who got his start with Mommy and Daddy's camcorder at assorted frat parties. I went to college with dozens of guys like this, except for the fact that this one went on to make his mark in a recession-proof industry video porn.

According to news reports, the defendant responded to Ms. Gritzke's lawsuit by saying, "There is no privacy protection for people who take their clothes off in public, especially at a big public event where many people have cameras."

Not a lot of gray area there, from where I'm sitting. Anybody who takes his or her clothes off in front of hundreds of people on a public street deserves whatever humiliation is coming. Besides, if Becky Lynn didn't mind a few hundred people gazing at her breasts (all I did was type the word "breasts," and I'm embarassed), then why should she mind if a few million dysfunctional males drool at her image on their television sets?

Although I've never had the pleasure of meeting this young woman, I imagine she has something else on her mind. First of all, a large number of friends and family members are now aware of this episode. That's something to keep in mind the next time you think, "I can (name your indiscretion here). Nobody will ever know." That's a lie. Someone always finds out, and it's usually the last person you want to know. A large number of participants in last year's Gold Club trial found that out the hard way.

Second, there's the matter of Becky Lynn's future family. Should she ever be blessed with children, she could very well face this scenario one day: "Mom, so-and-so at school showed me a picture of you, and you didn't have clothes on." That'll make most parents cringe. Speaking from the other perspective, the thought of people seeing pictures of my mother in the altogether gives me the creeps.

So it comes down to this: How important is your reputation? Do you want it tarnished forever on video because of one silly thing you did as a young person? Think about that the next time you consider stepping on a stage at a wet T-shirt contest or getting intoxicated and possibly doing something humiliating or even criminal and not even remembering it.

That's an image that should be forever etched in your brain, clear as crystal with none of those squiggly TV boxes.

[Monroe Roark can be reached at mroark@TheCitizenNews.com.]

Back to the Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page