The Pocahontas phenomenon

I was surfing through TV channels one afternoon and caught the confession of a one-time movie starlet on one of the more popular talk shows. We shall call her “Pocahontas” from here on, for reasons to be explained later. She was obviously very pregnant and very proud because there was a lilt to her tone and a lift to her chin as she made the announcement.

Curious, I let go of the channel change button and tuned in. In all of 10 minutes, give or take, Pocahontas had intimated, in not so many words, that her relationship with the father of the child she was carrying (we shall call him John Smith) was indeed illicit. She went on to admit that said man is a millionaire, if not a billionaire, amid giggles and eyelash battings, and that the pregnancy was something she had worked on. Translation: it was no accident.

She was the picture of health, considering the bloating and atrocious weight gain associated with pregnancy and she appeared enthusiastic and optimistic. Her pronouncements were peppered with even more giggles, eyebrow raises, and naughty side-glances at the hosts, who were playfully underscoring her luck at landing such a good catch of a man. 

All good, I thought to myself. Nothing wrong with being a starlet; it’s a perfectly legitimate profession, which has established a profitable niche in the entertainment industry, mainly because of the captive DOM market. (Please look up the acronym yourself, or peruse RJ Ledesma’s column, if you don’t already know it.)

At a social function that evening, several people at my table were in conversation about Pocahontas. I listened in and deduced that John Smith is, coincidentally, a friend, someone who moves in the Fortune 500 business circle of our country, and who is very much married — all of 17 years and with two gorgeous children — to a woman who looks like Dutch supermodel Doutzen Kroes (Google her and drool!), and has the personality of an angel. 

I wasn’t in the least bit surprised because successful businessman “John Smith” has been known to have a wandering eye. In our society, men who remain faithful to their partners are the mutants; illicit couplings are a dime a dozen; and two-bit bold stars throwing themselves onto moneyed men are such common occurrences that they have become boring news. There have been too many high-profile personalities in our town succumbing to sins of the flesh with starlets half their age and carried out in such grand style and luxury and with so much pomp and circumstance that it makes Tiger Woods’ and Shaquille O’Neal’s debacles amateur-ish. What a pity — really.

Clarification: the last thing we want to do here is to judge for who, in this imperfect world, is untainted? We are all damaged to varying degrees; no one is spared. Why people do what they do remains an airtight mystery of the human condition. And to borrow the wise words of a dear female friend, “Morality is man-made. I am a great fan of personal happiness; go for whatever it is that makes you happy but go after it the right way; don’t step on anyone in the process.” 

But what rocked me to my very core was the brazenness of Pocahontas, who came out on national television announcing her indiscretion to the world. All of a sudden what, in the beginning, seemed to me as enthusiasm and optimism on the part of our starlet made its true self known as gloating — masking desperation. 

Apparently, the back story is that John Smith, the father of Pocahontas’s unborn child, had all but lost interest and had been slowly trying to disengage from her. She was simply lucky enough to have snagged some motile sperm off of him in the nick of time, so that she now has scored for herself some honest-to-goodness life insurance.

Nothing wrong with that either. Some people do make a living in the best way they know how; this happens to be her forte, so there. But she should have ceased and desisted right there. Flinging her dirty laundry in public, before the legal wife and legitimate children of John Smith via that first TV outing and, in successive days, broadsheet and tabloid press releases, is obviously fueled by outright malice. 

It is a war she is waging here. It is obviously not enough that she has successfully anchored herself to the coattails of a man of means, who has no intention of running from accountability. She wants much more; she wants to gloat and aims to humiliate everybody else involved — mainly, John Smith himself, who has much to lose in a public crucifixion such as this. Just like the cliché goes: Hell hath no fury… you know the rest. Clearly, clichés exist and endure because there is more than an ounce of truth in them.

Malice is what makes the difference between what is forgivable and what is not. If two consenting adults fall honestly in love, what holier-than thou, sin-free pariah would chastise them? But for one to resort to desperate measures to latch on to a disengaging partner — whether said partner is the legal spouse who wants out, a disillusioned girlfriend or boyfriend who has had enough, or a sugar daddy who had just gotten bored — is not only barbaric, it’s lunatic. It should be punishable by burning at the stake. I mean, we’re talking Fatal Attraction here; we’re talking dirty tricks not only of the bunny-boiling sort in the privacy of one’s kitchen but grandstanding via the shock-and-awe effect of news blitzes. Same evil; different face.

What puzzles me is how and why publishers and producers afford Pocahontas precious inches in print and expensive airtime on TV. It’s not like she is the Megastar or the Star for All Seasons. Sure, at the end of the day, everything is a business and there is money to be made. But does this mean that Pocahontas makes for good cover and that the public buys into her story so much so that networks and tabloids have much to gain from the coverage? If so, does it follow that the public empathizes with her and agrees that having a child with a rich man is a foolproof meal ticket and is therefore okay to aspire to? Or does this simply mean that Pocahontas has amassed enough money from her benefactor so that she can now afford to bankroll her own publicity projects?

Whichever it is, doesn’t it all sound pathetic? That instead of concerning ourselves with the victims of the Maguindanao massacre, the devastation of Haiti, and the fate of our nation in the upcoming elections, we listen to the gloating of the Pocahontases of our society because they can’t let go of a lifestyle of private planes, trips to Greece, Range Rovers, and chi-chi penthouses?

Come on, they have gotten what they wanted: a rich man’s spawn.  Because of our collective curiosity we have afforded them their 15 minutes of fame. It’s time to move on, people, and turn the page and change the channel. 

A word of caution to aspiring Pocahontases: like every single one of us, you, too, shall have your day of reckoning, so be careful where you tread.

And to the John Smiths of our world, who have money to burn and time to frolic in the garden of lust and leisure: tread lightly, as well, because the children you bring forth through inconvenient means might just have to bear your karma.

To the spouses and girlfriends who cannot let go of men who are moving heaven and earth to disengage from them: move on quietly and privately. There is much dignity in that.

Finally, to the rest of us: let’s keep our noses well within the bounds of our private businesses and not anywhere else.

Oh, and by the way, why the name “Pocahontas”? Take the first syllable and say it twice.

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.