The College Fix

Duke dropout Miriam Weeks, aka porn “star” Belle Knox, who achieved fifteen minutes of fame earlier this year when she threw away a lifetime’s worth of privileged private school education, Catholic upbringing, and her place at an elite university in order to star in online porn videos, has a complaint. Are you ready for this? She told Rolling Stone magazine that she does no longer feels “respected” at Duke.

This outcome apparently came as a surprise to her.

Weeks also complains that some of her family members have “turned their back” on her.

On the other hand, she says nothing in the interview about whether or not she feels she “turned her back” on her family when she chose to go into porn without a care for how that decision would affect her family members.

Anyway.

Following in the footsteps of other sex-tape celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardawhatever, Weeks is now the star of her own reality show, in which 8 young people will compete for $1 million and the opportunity to have sex with Ms. Weeks on camera for a yet-to-be-named porn film.

What’s most troubling about this misguided girl, beyond the sad fact of what’s she’s doing to herself and her future, is the near-total internalization of the victim mindset that the evinces in almost every public statement she makes.

As the recent #YesAllWomen hashtag extravaganza demonstrated, even a mass murder can become an opportunity for self-centeredness and victimhood for this generation of supposed feminists–the same folks who stand up and applaud the likes of Miriam Weeks as a champion of women’s rights every time she willfully reduces herself to a sexual object.

Here’s a girl who made her celebrity and fortune by playing the victimized feminist sex-worker card in an online article, after she was “outed” as a porn star on campus. The narrative of the bullied, can’t-pay-for-college victim, was one she played for publicity. Even though, most of that narrative was a lie. In fact, victimhood was Ms. Weeks’s primary tool of self-promotion. Now that she has been successful at making a big deal of herself and her chosen career, she complains that she doesn’t feel respected.

Do you see the irony here?  It was the disreputable nature of her chosen line of work that was the very basis of the fame and fortune she sought. This smart-rich-girl-goes-bad saga wouldn’t have been a news story to begin with if porn was a respectable profession, and none of us would know the name Miriam Weeks. But I don’t think Ms. Weeks has enough self awareness to understand that all the fame and wealth she sought was made possible only by the public’s lack of respect for the work she does.

The girls who get rich and famous doing sex tapes are simply rich and famous. They aren’t really respected–no matter how many TV shows or magazine covers they may attain.

Many people today have confused fame and respect. That’s because scandal sells. Without a doubt, the scandal fueled internet blog-gossip machine is best at making rich and famous the most disrespected people among us.

Just ask Donald Sterling.

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.

Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden

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