Editor’s Note: I felt as though this was appropriate to post now after watching the video below, and feeling some kind of way about it.  Voice your commentary in that comment box after if you feel moved to.  This post is from our Last Dollar Van To Brooklyn e-book.

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by Dr J.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to grace this site with my presence and everyone should know that I’m hard at work to make a change and you’ll be seeing more of me around here.  Now that we’ve got the cordialities out of the way, let’s get into today’s post.  Last night, most of America tuned into CBS to watch the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.  I haven’t missed one of these shows in years.  I actually was blessed to make it to a show in Miami a few years ago.  The VS Fashion Show is like NASCAR racing, “It looks fun at home, but when you see it in person, it’ll totally change your perspective.  In an attempt to be provocative and not incite a riot, I made a few observations about last night.

By @DrJayJack

Recently in the news we found out that it may be trouble on the home front for Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, but what does that really mean?  I don’t think it really means anything to us mere mortals.  We’ve got to stop looking at couples like Will & Jada or Barack & Michelle as if they truly represent Black love.  Let’s keep it all the way 100, it really doesn’t represent the majority of Black love in America.  In reality, we need look no further than outside the window of our apartment high-rise to see Uncle Scooter still think nobody peeped that he has an “awkward” relationship with his stepdaughter.  To be honest, that’s not what was so alarming about the situation to me.  What was alarming about the situation was that Jada allegedly got caught cheating on Will with Marc Anthony who was guest starring on her TNT show, Hawthorne, at the time.  Now we can have a conversation all day long about could it really be considered cheating since they are in a open relationship, but it was alarming to me that nobody said anything about the fact that Jada cheated on a Black man with a Latino man.

By @DrJayJack

Me and my boy have some of the most epic conversations ever about some of the most random topics ever.  One day we get on the topic of chicks sending naked pictures of themselves naked around and why it’s easier for chicks to do that and not for men to do that.  Comes down to this, I know most men right now have some pictures of a chick naked on his phone.  You won’t see those pictures unless he dies with his phone unlocked.  (Real Gs like myself have their phone encrypted with a password, and if you punch in the wrong one a few times, it erases everything.) Anyway, with women it’s a little different, if you send a picture of your loaf of bread to a chick, EXPECT it to be forwarded to all her friends.  They just can’t keep anything to themselves.

That got me to thinking about a few things, like how messed up is it to go through #tittytuesday and #thongthursday pictures on twitter while laying next to a shorty?  That depends on how those pictures make you feel.  Might be kind of hard to explain that tent you pitching when your girl just woke up and you’re holding your BlackBerry.  How harmless is my obsession with Rosa Acosta, Suelyn Medeiros and Laura Dore?  It’s gotten so bad that now I’m defending Rosa on Twitter to people like I knew her personally and we have all day chat sessions on BBM.  If you asked me, I’m in a full committed relationship with Rosa Acosta … in my mind.  And guess how I found that out?  I have Tweetdeck and I keep a feed of Rosa’s timeline up and one day I thought about doing the same for Suelyn and guess what?  I felt bad about that, and couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Now, this all leads me to this question, “If you’re dating a guy would you prefer that he have a virtual side piece or a legit side piece?”

Wait, think about that for a second.

Take another second to think about it.

A virtual side piece is absolutely and positively harmless.  She won’t get pregnant, she won’t give you an STD, and she won’t even flip out when you don’t pay her all that much attention.  There’s very little real commitment to the situation outside of a chat here and there, maybe a few pictures, if it gets that far, she might get the phone number, but chances are … she won’t.  And absolutely positively no man in the history of the male gender has left his main piece for his virtual side piece.  Not never.  Meanwhile, side pieces in the flesh are getting negroes #everydayb.

So why do women flip out about your virtual side piece?  Good question and easy answer.  It comes down to emotional infidelity.  The relationship is not physical at all, but the virtual side piece gets a piece of you.  Men are often accused of being horrible multi-taskers, but nothing can be further from the truth.  Men are very much capable of balancing a few pieces on the team and keeping them all satisfied with a part of him.  Most men have a girl they sleeping with, a girl they emotionally involved with, a girl they go to with questions about life and love, and then a few sisters that they have to just not be surrounded by men all the time. The conflict?  Your main girl wants 100% of you.  She doesn’t want a piece, deposit, payment, or anything less than 100%.

Now, hold up.  You know how they say, “aspirin is harmless, but if you take 13 it’ll be your last headache.” Well, yeah your virtual side pieces are harmless, but that don’t you can’t end up like Crocodile Hunter, done off because of some allegedly harmless tail.

(Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee should start taking notes now.)

1) Twitter – Many men have Plaxico’ed themselves by trying to send a Direct Message and it ends up on your entire TL.  All that to say, take your time with your DMs, I recommend using a third-party software like Tweetdeck to make sure you’re sending a DM.  No use in getting caught with a, “D @PurpleLilly81: She left, I’m getting on Skype now.”

2) Gmail – Uncheck that box that says always signed in on the login screen, go off the record with all chats and when you sign in, go to the bottom of the page where it says, “Last Account Activity” and ensure you are not signed in at any other locations.

3) BlackBerry Messenger – Go into your options and uncheck the box that says, “Save Conversations on Media Card.”

4) Text Messages – Delete text messages frequently, note that most text messaging platforms save MMS messages forever, so manually delete those too.

5) Phone Contacts and Gchat – Change your virtual side piece’s last name to yours and say it’s your cousin, or put Aunt in front of their name.

6) Pictures – Never put your face in any picture, and don’t post it anywhere public.  Most specifically Craigslist or Match.com.

7) Facebook and Twitter – Watch out for your mutual friends.  I know a dude who got caught up because one of his girl’s friends noticed he was tweeting a lot with some chick late at night and spilled the beans to his girl.

8) A Copy of the 4^th Amendment – Always have a copy around just so you know your rights in case you end up in a situation.  Most important thing you need to know, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” (Basically, people can’t go through your ish without a warrant, and if they do, they can’t use it against you.)

#imdone

When I wrote this article, I had little to no idea how big of a hit it would be on the internet.  It was picked up by several websites and blogs around the country and readers could not find a way to ever express their feelings in just the comment section.  A lot of readers judge women in the Urban Modeling industry, they say they’re uneducated or degrading all women.  But, do you know what the biggest criticism is?  They say there’s no future in the industry; that these women will be pointless and have nothing to hold onto once their looks fail them.

Do you seriously think that these video vixens seriously think they are going to be doing music videos forever?!  Do you even think they want to be doing music videos forever?  No, that’s just dumb, it makes little to no sense.  They know that they will not be young and beautiful forever and they need to find a way to capitalize off the assets now, so they can sit on their a$$ later.  Let me first start off by saying, that similar to any profession, most will fail.  Most women that we see in music videos will move onto to other careers and never fully leverage the video vixen experience into much wealth.

But some of them will end up very wealthy… I know that burns to hear, but it’s the truth.

Jennifer Lopez, Lisa Raye, and Elise Neal, (yes, Elise Neal from The Hughleys), they all started out doing music videos.  And look at them now, they’ve made pretty good careers for themselves.  Probably the most successful of the three is Jennifer Lopez, we all know she was a Fly Girl, but she leveraged her music video experience as well as the experience as a Fly Girl into a movie and music career.

Let me tell you something about Lopez, Raye and Neal, when you look at their story, they hustled.  They hustled! I’m not the only one who notices that many of the models that we follow on twitter are in a different city and state each night, “hosting” some event.  Models can make $2K-10K, on just showing up to a nightclub.  In addition to hosting events at nightclubs, models get paid a lot of money in appearances for other events such as; trade shows, auto shows, gun shows, etc.  Some models choose to do endorsements, with endorsements ranging from as small as a local restaurant to as big as Sean John or Rocafella clothing wear.

Danielle Crawley, a former video vixen was able to leverage her experience and contacts into a Modeling Agency to provide female models for music videos.  I guess this would be the equivalent of becoming a “Madame.”  Her modeling agency was turned into a reality show, Candy Girls and aired on E! in 2009.  (And then they cancelled the show as soon as they finally let Kysha model!)

However, there are a few popular career paths video vixens follow; music, book deals, and television.  I’m not sure anybody would have thought when they saw Angel Lola Luv for the first time in the Trey Songz’s, “Wonder Woman” video, she would be dropping a mixtape or starring in a straight to DVD movie.  Karrine Steffans was able to turn a nickname like, “Superhead” into a multi-million dollar book deal.  (Remind me to tell y’all why I think Kat Stacks is a genius.)  Last, but not least, Melyssa Ford, one of the most notable video vixens of the 2000s was able to flip her music video experience into a television deal.  She hosted, BET’s How I’m Living and BET Style.

Vida Guerra and Amber Rose have been able to do something that most of the “video models” have never been able to do and that’s cross over into mainstream.  Vida Guerra was able to become one of FHM’s sexiest females in 2005.  Amber Rose reportedly has been signed to Ford Model Agency.  And if that ain’t coming up, I don’t know how else to define it.

So to me it seems like “urban models” or video vixens catch a bad rap for their chosen profession, but behind the scenes it isn’t really just a cute face and a big booty.  I’m sure we know now that without excellent business savvy you’ll end up out of the industry in just a short time.  If you have a dream of being a video vixen forever you’ll end up nowhere.  The video vixens who have a dream and a passion to use the industry to capitalize and do better for themselves may actually get somewhere.  Isn’t that ambitious?

Last thing, I’ll say here is, as I was writing this article I noticed that a lot of these women sold sex to make a profit and get access to other parts of the entertainment industry, like music and movies.  I started to think if they were better or worse than rappers who sell drugs or perpetuate violence to gain access to other parts of the entertainment industry, like music or movies.  Food for thought.

Dr J.

(@DrJayJack)