When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a fighter pilot (true story). As I got older and entered college, I wanted to be a social worker, but then I switched to history for my degree instead. Now I want to be a journalist, which is why you get to hear from me every other week. The point (and I promise there is one) is that we all grow up thinking about what we want to become; and as we grow up, we try and figure out how to make what we want happen.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this evolution from childhood to adulthood, though for a very strange reason.

It all started with an article I read online last week at The Daily Beast, “Celebrity Mistress Convention,” by Tricia Romano. The article was primarily about three women (Joslyn James, Melissa Smith and January Ryan) who have been in the news lately because of the men they were either actually, or allegedly, sleeping with.

Of course, the men they have been connected to happen to be famous. You would have to have been living under a rock for the past few months to not know who they were, and how their images have been damaged by their extramarital affairs.

James, according to the article, was mistress no. 11 of Tiger Woods.

Smith was one of the women helping Jesse James cheat on Sandra Bullock.

And Ryan held a press conference to say she was not involved as the other woman in the break up of New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush and celebrity personality Kim Kardashian. Why that requires a press conference is beyond me. Oh right, self-promotion.

All three women were recently in Los Angeles at the ExxxoticaLA porn convention, where Romano spoke with them about their current . . . projects would be the best word for them I suppose.

One line of Romano’s article particularly stuck out to me, with a quote from Ryan about wanting to be a musician: “‘It [the controversy of the alleged affair] started overshadowing me wanting to be an artist. I had to take a hold of it.’ She is currently filming a reality TV show with the other mistresses.”

I just can’t wait for that piece of quality television.

So how does all of this connect with my earlier statement about growing up? Well, while reading Romano’s article, all I could think was, when these three women were growing up, did they dream of becoming famous because of who they crawled into bed with? Or as they got older, did they see sleeping with someone already famous as an easy path to the spotlight?

Though seriously, why would you want to be famous for that?

No one can answer those questions but the women themselves, and I don’t really care to ask them. But seeking this path to fame makes me seriously worried what kind of an example some of the women of my generation, a group who seems obsessed with the famous and becoming famous themselves, are setting for how we want to be treated and represented.

As for me, I think I’ll play it safe and stick with journalism—though with the fighter pilot option on the back burner. Print might be dying, but there’s always war.

Lisa Robertson is a graduate student and columnist for the Summer Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].