Suzy Favor Hamilton, three-time U.S. Olympian, seven-time U.S. champion and the most decorated female athlete in NCAA track and field history, has been outed by The Smoking Gun as Kelly Lundy, a $600-an-hour escort working for Haley Heston’s Private Collection…. “I take full responsibility for my mistakes,” Favor Hamilton told TSG. “I’m not the victim and I’m not going that route. I’m owning up to what I did. I would not blame anybody except myself.” She added, “Everybody in this world makes mistakes. I made a huge mistake. Huge.”
One aspect of American culture I’ve always struggled to understand is our conflicted attitude regarding sex and sexuality. We all want to get laid, but others getting their needs met in ways we might not is more often than not viewed as wrong, immoral, or perverted. Why the “news” that a former Olympic athlete had been “outed” as a high-priced call girl is something worth spreading across the Internet baffles me.
So Suzy Favor Hamilton was getting paid $600 to have sex with men? And the problem with this would be…?? Who’s the victim here? Hamilton willingly and knowingly boinked men who willingly and knowingly paid her for the privilege. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that something criminal, immoral, or just plain criminal took place. Two people had sex, and the woman was paid for her “services.” That’s a business transaction, not a moral or legal failing…and it’s certainly not “news.” It’s nobody’s damn business; the only people Favor Hamilton should be answering or apologizing to are her husband and family.
Sure, working as a $600/hour call girl is not some you or I might choose to do (How many people want to see me naked, anyway?)…but does it rise to the level of scandal? Is it newsworthy? Why do we as a culture feel that we possess the right to judge someone for the private choices they make? I get that Favor Hamilton felt the need to apologize via Twitter. What I don’t understand why she felt it necessary to do so, as if she’d committed some sort of crime against our collective sense of decency.
The only person who needs to have any input or opinion on the matter is her husband. Favor Hamilton did what she did for reasons only she fully understands. If she can square matters with her husband and keep her family together, why does it matter what anyone else thinks?
The short answer, of course, is that it doesn’t…and shouldn’t…but we’re Americans and we’re busybodies, so of course we’ll cluck disapprovingly. If there’s one thing we Americans do exceedingly well, it’s judge others.
