Dirty Little Secret

Conflicting messages are what we are all being bombarded with when it comes to today’s entertainment industry. Film is an art form and art is supposed to reflect real life. Screenwriters and authors write stories, which most times are not entirely fictional, even if that is the genre. Most of these “stories” have a hint or more of a personal life occurrence that the writer or someone they know has experienced. So the age old question remains, does art imitate life or does life imitate art?

I have been watching a lot of Sex and the City lately, so please forgive me for the examples that will be used, but on a complete side note I only have one more season to go before I can say that I have seen the entire series…yay for me…finishing what I start…lol. Now back to my point.

Cheating is wrong. Obviously! Right? 

Every movie or show we watch proves this fact, or does it? 

In some scenarios it does. Take Tyler Perry’s movie “Temptation” for example. This beautiful, smart, successful, happily married woman who has a wonderful adoring husband decides to cheat on him with a more “successful” man. Due to her actions the cheatee ends up being a crazy HIV infected abusive a-hole and the aforementioned adulterating woman ends up alone with the HIV. This is clearly an extreme example of how cheating is portrayed as wrong, now let’s look at the alternative.

 

Grey’s Anatomy, Friends, Gossip Girl and Sex and the City, what do all of these shows have in common other than the fact that I love them all? Cheating, that’s what! 

Interesting twist, they each offer cheating that is completely understandable and even justifiable. Allow me to explain.

Each heroine from these shows has found herself in this situation. After years of building a back and forth relationship with the woman’s “soulmate”, each woman is put in some kind of cheating situation, but as viewers we don’t even get mad at them for this. Why? Cheating is wrong, right?

Meredith becomes the “dirty mistress” in her steaming love affair with a married McDreamy, but when his wife Addison cheated on him with the oh so hot Dr. Sloan she was definitely in the wrong, no question about that. However, when Mer and Derrick do it, as an audience we wanted them to, we expected it. It had to happen for the show to go on.

The “we were on a break” story line from Friends. Ross cheats on Rachel and we hate him for it. Rachel constantly gets in the way of him and his relationships by making Ross cheat (not necessarily with sex, but emotional cheating occurs for sure) and we get it. It doesn’t even come up on our radar that she is the other woman because how can she be the “other” when we know she is the “one”?

Gossip Girl character Blair Waldorf finds herself in a crazy love triangle between her Parisian prince and her beloved Chuck Bass. Before we know that the prince is a putz we empathize with him as a viewer, but ultimately struggle with the back and forth relationship of Chuck and Blair for all six seasons of the show. Cheating is just anecdotal drama needed for the show. We know Chuck and Blair will be together because they have to be.

Then of course there is the Big mistake made by Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City. The Big affair. This is when Carrie is dating the perfect boyfriend one could ask for Aiden, but somehow still ends up hooking up with her ex manfriend Mr. Big who is married to a twenty-something year old named Natasha. Viewers were pissed-ish at Carrie for doing this, but not long enough to hate her because we understood that it was a force of nature that drew her into the arms of Mr. Big and that my friends is what we refer to as fate.  

These characters that we have emotionally invested in and see so much of ourselves in, make this horrendous mistake and we forgive them because we know they were unexplainably drawn to this other person, so in actuality it wasn’t their fault. They had to either cheat on or cheat with to get their man back, right?! 

Do we believe this to be true in our own lives? These plot lines do not try to justify whoring around, but to be the cheater or the cheatee with that one special person…is that OK? Do we have one free pass if it is our great love and if so will this keep us from the damnation and judgment of others?

So ladies and gentleman, the question on the table today is…do you think it is OK to cheat if and only if it is for the sole purpose in completing our life’s story? Is it ever justifiable to partake in this specific act of defiance?  

Obviously if you cheat you will not necessarily end up with AIDS and death (but you may). 

Is it possible that we know we are chasing after our soul mate when we do cheat? How do we know that this particular individual is our special someone?

The problem is the media has blurred the lines between right and wrong, what some see as black and white can also be seen through shades of grey. 

We love Meredith Grey, Rachel Green, Blair Waldorf and Carrie Bradshaw, we as women see ourselves in them. So is it alright if our Derrick, Ross, Chuck or Mr. Big are currently with someone else that we try to get them back. Is the flirting, tempting and emotional relationship on the side acceptable? Is this cheating different from other circumstances of adultery? Would we even define what we are doing as cheating?

There is no denying that there are certain people in this world that we are drawn to without any explanation. The very essence of their being somehow completes and consumes us. We have had this man in our lives in some kind of capacity for some time, so there is now history there, which only further affirms our notion of purposeful passion and dare I say it, true love.  

If we find that they are somehow in a relationship with another woman, is it reasonable for us to take matters into our own hands and still have a relationship with this man? Is it alright if we are doing it for the sake of “true love” or because we are “supposed to end up with them?”

We are the lead woman, and the heroine of the story of our life, so I believe we make sense of it to others and to ourselves because it has made sense in the aforementioned situations. We are not the type of women who would cheat, but many find that they are the type that will push limits and bend rules to get the man that they are destined to be with back, but how do we know that he is that man?

I ask these questions and pass no judgment, but I would love to hear your responses. I myself have found myself in some questionable situations at times, so I assure that calling you out for your answers, whichever way you believe is not my intention. I simply would love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Just some food for thought, until next time…

Love Always,

Cassandra B.

“The Other C.B.”

New Year...New Me

I am not one for New Years Resolutions, as I am a firm believer that when we set these kind of goals we are simply setting ourselves up for failure. How many people do you know that have these resolutions and they truly believe that this year will be different. They talk it up all the way up until January 1 and then slowly as time progresses these changes never really happen. Why do we do this to ourselves over and over again.

I for one think that we should always try to be better than the person we were yesterday. Self improvement is important and should not be a thing that we set aside until the first of the year. If that is what we are going to do then I guess it's alright for us to go ahead and wait another 365 days to set any new goals for ourselves from today on. Does that make any sense at all? No matter what day or month of the year I think we need to self assess and see what it is that we can do to make ourselves better people.

Me, Autumn and Mike...it's a small world after all :)

I also think the best thing to do is to take baby steps. By doing this we are not setting ourselves up for failure, instead we may actually see some results. An example is instead of saying that by January 1, 2014 I want to be 100 pounds lighter, set a goal that does not sound so insane. Say that each week your goal is to lose 1 pound. At the end of seven days if you have reached this goal then you can be proud of yourself. By being proud you will continue on the right path as opposed to a self destructive one where you just beat yourself up and admit defeat. There are approximatley 52 weeks in a year so if you do this, then you will have lost 52 pounds by the following January. No that's not 100, but hey look at you...you are now 52 pounds lighter and proud that you reached a goal. That's not too shabby to me.

My goals are simple...I'm not making any new years resolutions. The words actually have a negative connotation to me. Instead I would like to say my daily goal for self improvement would be some of the following: be more positive, more assertive, more forgiving, more appreciative of what I have and not focusing so much on what I do not, telling the people in my life how much they mean to me and expressing that to them so they know. I want to stop assuming that I know what people think...I don't. I want to become more self-accepting. I want to be a kinder, nicer person. I want to focus on forgiving those who have done me wrong or disapointed me, and when I say forgive them, I mean really find it in my heart to forgive them. I want to accept that sometimes (often times) I do wrong or make mistakes and sometimes there is no way to go back and fix these things.

I want to strive to be the best person I can be and the best way to do this is to take a look at me on the inside and be honest with myself about where improvements need to be made. By doing this I believe at the end of every day I will start to become the person I was inteded to be. This is not something I hope to see results in the next year, but hopefully every single day. This is not my "resolution", but instead a promise to myself and how shitty would I feel if I broke a promise to me...lol.

I feel like for the most part I'm a fairly honest person and I will be the firs to tell you that I make mistakes and wrong choices every single day. The worst thing I think I could do would be to be dishonest to myself. Hell, the first step is admitting you have a problem, then you can grow. I hope to learn from my mistakes and grow from them, not repeat them. So I challenge you all to do the same thing and do a self-assessment of yourself. Step 1- cut a hole in the box...oops, wrong step 1...haha...just kidding, but seriously...Step 1- be honest with yourself, what could you do this week to make you a better person? Write down a few things and try them out this week. As you do cross them off your list and by next Sunday look at that list and see how much you've already done. Baby steps! You should be proud because it's the little things in life...and those little things add up.

I hope this wasn't too preachy for you today, but I thought it was worth saying and what was on my heart to talk about today. I hope you all have a very Happy New Year! Be positive and realistic...you never know what awaits you in the future! This reminds me of my goal for today...and that is to not be a Debbie Downer for 24 hours...so far...so good ;)

Love Always,

Cassandra B.

"The Other C.B."

Sex & the City-ish!

Today allow me to go ahead and introduce myself. I think it's the polite thing to do. Here's a little background info about me! I am 25, with a Master's degree in journalism from the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma (Boomer Sooner!). I also have a bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in mass communication, with an emphasis in broadcast journalism and a minor in communication studies. So what all does that say about me? Basically, that I love to write and talk...hahaha!

I graduated a little over a year ago, and like most American's in this economic drought, it was not until recently that I was able to find a "real" job. And as you also may have guessed it, it is not in my field of study. I do enjoy the job and can pull things that I learned in school to help me with it, but I'm not anchoring for a news station, writing for a newspaper, or really any closer to becoming the next Chelsea Handler or female version of Ryan Seacrest. With that said, I am very greatful to have been hired and that it is somewhere I am happy at. What can I say, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

Why tell you all of this? It's simple really, I want you to understand why I am posting this blog and what it is all about! I miss being a journalist, it's who I am! Our whole lives we think about, "what am I going to be when I grow up?". My list is numerous, I was going to be an actress, a pop-sensation, a performer, a TV show host. No matter what it was it had to do with something in the realm of entertainment. I love pop culture, and my best friend Eric will be the first to tell you, when it comes to news, I can tell one everything there is to know about "fake news" and here lately (in a long long time), nothing that's going on in the real world (really sad for a journalism major, I know...I know!), but hey give me some credit. I am simply trying to be honest.

Palin & Bradshaw (get why I call her that now? Haha).

So the idea of this blog came to me about a month ago, but due to the start of a new career and trying to move, it has been put on hold...until now! My friend Tarina and I have nicknames for one another. I call her Palin (I'll post a pic and you can clearly see why) and she calls me  Bradshaw. That one may be less clear to some.

She calls me this because, I use to write a column for my college paper, The Northeastern. It was one of my favorite things to do. I also love anything that sparkles. I love shoes, writing, purses and I am all that is feminine! I believe one should embrace being a woman because it is a wonderful/beautiful thing. So in a nut-shell she calls me Bradshaw  because even though my life is not nearly as eventful as that of the fictional character from HBO's hit sitcom, there are in fact some similarities.

While planning for Palin's bridal shower/bachelorette party, that was of course Sex & the City themed. I was posting on her Facebook wall something about it and it occured to me that Carrie Bradshaw and myself, both have the exact same initials. So I thought to myself, how can I make this applicable to my life? Naturally I came to the conclusion to write. Just like the ficticious columnist in the show.

I do not pretend that I am the fashionista that is Miss SJP, or that I could even begin to pull off some of the things that she does, but I can appreciate and love some things about her. This is my passion and one that I hope not to lose, so even though I am not getting paid to do this, nor am I building up my employment resume', I am doing what I love. I hope that you will follow me as I continue to write about whatever it is that moves me throughout the days, weeks, months and maybe even years of my life.

This blog or column is my new "fun for me" project and one that hope someone will find, read and love as much as I do. That is it for now, but I promise there are new and exciting things to come. Keep looking and I'll keep posting!

                                                                                                            Love Always,

Cassandra B.

"The Other C.B."