The girl can't help it

And now, I'd like to talk about public nudity.

It's been a couple of weeks now since photos of Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees acting… unladylike surfaced on the Internet and America is finally beginning to pick up the pieces. It's always terrible when a public figure who is paid to pose so men can ogle her goes "off the reservation" and lets them ogle her for free. But this time, I have taken it especially hard because the rogue trollop is a fellow Nevadan.

No, Katie and I have never met, although it looks likely that she wouldn't remember it if we had. But I feel that I understand her pain nonetheless. It's like, pretend that you're an attractive young person (not all of us have to pretend, of course, but bear with me). Pretend that you're a beauty queen, which means your very livelihood has always depended on your ability to give a dynamite first impression to judges, fashion designers and older men, such as Miss USA owner Donald Trump.

More than that, imagine that ever since you were small, you got positive feedback when you did things that drew a lot of attention to how pretty you were — such as winning pageants. And not only did you never learn that people also cared what you were like inside, you found yourself in a lifestyle where most people literally don't. That could be rough on the old self-esteem.

Now let's pretend that a few years go by and now you're really drunk at a bar with your friends. Nobody is paying attention to you, which makes you feel kind of lousy. You decide you don't like feeling lousy. The equation is simple: If you can make people look at you, you will feel good. Click. Time to strip.

The whole Rees scandal makes me doubt the intelligence of the average citizen. What exactly did we expect? Models, including those in so-called "scholarship programs" like Miss USA, are young women who have been shown over and over that looks are all that matter and that if they make one wrong move, they will cease to be pretty enough to compete. Then no one will like them. It's a miracle we don't have pixielike 20-somethings exploding every day like a chain of firecrackers across the globe.

Another aspect that bothers me is the double standard implied here. When Rees appeared in mainstream magazines, it was OK, because we could all pretend that every male in the audience was not looking straight at her chest. But as soon as pics come out acknowledging that some people might want to see her without her clothes, and — horrors! — that she might want to see other people without theirs, she compromised the sanctity of her office. The moral of that story is one we've heard before, mostly from guys who harass their secretaries: Sex is bad and we should pretend it doesn't exist.

I'm not saying that taking those pictures was a smart move, though. It was foolish. Rees has probably managed to ruin her preferred career path for good. She won't starve, but she probably will never be Miss America. I feel that she did this to herself, and I don't have much sympathy. But haven't you ever done something you'd rather not have broadcast over the Internet? How about your wife or son? How would you feel if anyone with a computer could see a photo gallery of you losing your last job or getting dumped by your college girlfriend?

What if you were Katie Rees' parent? A lot of people say, "My daughter would never do something like that." But everyone who ever did drugs or appeared in an adult video or committed a war crime was someone's child, and I'm willing to bet most of their folks never saw it coming. People do dumb stuff, especially when they're young and confused. Maybe if you try to cut them a little slack when they screw up, someone will do the same when it's your grandson up there on stage.

•••

He is the lamb. She is the slaughter. She's moving way too fast and all he wanted was to hold her. Nothing that mfarley@register-pajatonian.com does is really having an effect. He whispers that he loves her, but she's probably only looking for…so much more than he could ever give. A life full of lies and failing relationships. He keeps his hands pinned down at his sides. He waits for it to end and for the aching in his guts to subside.