Cardi B recently admitted that during her stripper days she would lure men to a room with the promise of sex, get them inebriated to the point of passing out, then rob them. There’s a group of people on this earth who might call that predatory and thieving behavior. What were they called again? It’s escaping me just now…Oh yeah, honest, decent, law abiding, and moral people.

Now I fully admit that she makes some enjoyable music. I’ve gotten down to “Bodak Yellow”, “Money”, and “I like it” whenever they come on the radio. I can enjoy music of all shapes, colors, sizes, and questionable philosophical priorities. Do we summarily forgive someone their legal indiscretions because they make enjoyable music? I mean, shouldn’t someone come forward and say “Hey, I was one of those guys and yes officer, I’d like to press charges”? There’s not much shame in this culture anymore and admitting you were a guy who went to a strip club and were victimized by an exotic dancer might lead to some justice down the road. Solidarity, fellas. Oh, yeah I forgot. Men can’t be victimized right now. Maybe sometime down the road.

The one they call Missus B is the second-billed star in a movie in which strippers lure men into an inebriation situation and steal from them. And some of us rolled our eyes when Eminem made a semi-autobiographical rap battle movie about the underground Detroit scene. The news surrounding this movie will be as predictable as the rhetoric, arguing, Facebook posting, and punditry following the next mass shooting. It will be as follows:

1. It will receive a horrible rating on Rotten Tomatoes and scolded for its gratuitous nudity or it will receive a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and lauded for its tasteful nudity.

2. If a fresh rating, it’ll be lauded as a feminist triumph. If a rotten rating, a step back for women.

3. If it receives a fresh rating and reaches #1 at the box office, liberal women everywhere will excitedly talk about how it’s a victory for female-driven cinema. If a fresh rating and tanks, they will engage in a lot of talk about patriarchy and lack of equality, as if the average moviegoer has anything to do with gender based power struggles in Hollywood.

4. No matter the outcome of 1-3 above, Jennifer Lopez will be afforded gushing praise for maintaining her looks at age 50, as if it’s hard to keep in shape when you’re a celebrity and make millions of dollars. There are multiple cottage industries formed for the expressed purpose of helping rich and famous people age gracefully.

Enough has and will be said about the ethics of stripping. I am a man of Christian faith and though I have looked on denuded women in the context of desire, I believe it is wrong morally and have had to confess that as sin to God. It’s just one more thing that makes living in a digital age difficult. My faith preaches that marriage is sacred, and that those outside of a marriage should not uncover the nakedness of a person, as that nakedness belongs to their spouse. That’s just the jumping off point for my discussion of this movie. I don’t intend on watching it. But not just for that reason.

Do we have to praise this kind of behavior? I am referring to what follows the stripping in the movie. I know that many women dance exotically for a bevy of reasons. College tuition, bills, good money, an exhibitionist personality, a feminist power move, and others. What none of them deny is that they are making a sexual object of themselves. But the women in this movie, and Cardi B in real life, follow that gem of a personal choice with stealing from the men who willingly pay to see them denuded.

What’s more, the tone of the trailer, which usually belies the tone of the movie, is a joking one. In one scene near the end, when the women are caught, a group of inept cops foolishly blunder about how their perp (Lopez) was able to get a phone into the interrogation room. We normalize things through humor. Even more powerful than the screeching of conservative Christians toward the normalizing for secular culture of the actions they are screeching about is humor. Something is no longer taboo, off-limits, extreme, shocking, hyperbolic, or wrong if we can laugh about it.

That’s what makes the screeching of the “alphabet people” as regards Dave Chappelle so ironic. Though he doesn’t address it in his shows, Dave is a man of the Muslim faith. The alphabet people are all violating several severely held tenets of the Muslim faith. But he’s not making jokes about them because he hates them, nor do they bring that up when they write about him. He’s doing it because he deems it funny and entertaining. Political, religious, and other agendas are energetically discarded when your job is to make something funny and entertaining. What they don’t realize with all their harping is they are just adding zeros to his next paycheck.

So maybe I shouldn’t give this movie any of my attention. But it just bugs me. A close friend of mine; a Muslim man who enjoys Chappelle’s work alongside me, states “God is an artist, and women are His masterpiece”. He and I disagree on the essence, being, and very path to God, but we don’t disagree on this statement. He and I, both middle-aged men that have trudged through years of loneliness following bitter divorces, know and acknowledge what power women have over us, even when they don’t know it. That gorgeous woman we pass in the grocery store holds in complete and absolute sway our attention for a few fleeting moments. And they do it with just their face. It’s part of what makes stripping so unnecessary. If more women moved out of the gatekeeper role and into the hunter role when it comes to initiating relationships, they could easily command us men around with no more than a smile and raised eyebrow.

But the women in this movie use that visual and sexual power to their advantage, lure men to a compromising situation, and steal from them. I just can’t get over it. In order to hamstring the idea of the audience feeling sorry for them, the men stolen from in this movie will be portrayed as vulgar, drooling, wealthy, and chauvinist rakes worthy of a good ole robbing. Probably white also. Nothing screams villain in today’s identity politics-driven media than wealthy white-boy. That all but one of the main characters are women of color doesn’t seem all that coincidental to me.

And we moviegoers are going to line up and enjoy this? I just can’t right now. I feel very hypocritical. I have long held that we can divorce movies from reality. Truth is not their goal. Entertainment is. But there are some, check that, many, no, check that also, MULTITUDES of foolish people out there who derive their morality from the movies they consume. I can’t and won’t ever understand it but I must accept it as reality. If this movie becomes a smash hit and these movie-morality driven people start engaging in this practice en masse, men who frequent strip clubs might just earn their own #Metoo moment.

I have a Facebook feed that is at times infuriating, heartwarming, and saddening. I have many former students who have graduated and moved onto the struggles and trials of adulthood on my friends list. More than one of them have contemplated stripping and actually have stripped to make ends meet. And they’ve been open about it on their social media. The word cringe is overused nowadays but I do cringe when I think of what they will say on their feeds in praise of this movie. I love my students like I love my own children, and stripping is just one of the mistakes I see some of them making that I wish I could keep them from making like I’m able to keep my own children from making.

Not to mention, I’m a former English teacher, and this movie is misusing “hustle”. Bludgeoning the language is a more lasting and therefore more consequential crime than stealing money from a drunken dude/bro/frat guy. Years ago when I understood that I’d never get ahead working as a teacher, I took some extra money I had at the end of the school year and started a small lawn business. I had a few push mowers, a tiny trailer, and a minivan. So I printed some flyers and hit the streets, sticking to customers with small lawns. I live and work in the inner city, despite my readily apparent and inescapable status as a corny white-boy. Living and working in the inner city is cheap (teacher, remember?) and fulfills part of my linguistic curiosity. I love slang, varying speech patterns, street lingo, and the metaphorical nature of Ebonics. Too many pale mayonnaise and casserole loving people in the suburbs complain about Ebonics. I won’t repeat all I’ve heard because it’s not pretty.

I find Ebonics fascinating. I’m always trying to define what different phrases mean through context. Repeating phrases for my black friends and students to laugh at my corny white-boy-edness is just icing on the cake. Dialects of all kinds from this country and that little island across the pond tickle my fancy. Anyway, one day a potential African-American customer appreciated my sales pitch, hired me, and said “every man needs a side hustle”. Not Ebonics, but definitely street lingo. In the context of sports, hustle means to move quickly, put forth maximum effort, and help your team win. In that conversation, “hustle” means moving quickly outside of your day job hours to make some extra cash. Nothing illegal or untoward is part of either equation.

At least it shouldn’t be. Before my lawn business grew to be a legitimate threat to the big lawn boys and large enough to sustain me for a time in self-employment, I said to a different customer “This is my hustle”. Learning that word from another customer made me happy and I started using it. He laughed really hard but refused to tell me why he was laughing. I came to find out that this guy had no discernible day job but always had wads of cash. You can do the math on that one. So this movie and that former customer are ruining the definition of the word. That was my own personal definition, so can I really be mad about it? More importantly, looking at the contradiction between my attitude towards movies and complaining about this particular movie, have you wasted your time reading this blog post?

Comment below, but please, be nice.