Why is the media paying so much attention to Ashley Alexandra Dupre, a woman destined to be in a long line of women who are famous just for being famous? Scratch that. She is famous because she got paid to have sex with a big time politician.

If the media didn't go digging for who "Kristen" was on a now infamous tape, describing "Client 9" and an encounter between the two, would we really care who this woman was and how she brought down former governor Eliot Spitzer? Would we even care about her background?

And what kind of message is this sending to our young women?

With more and more offers being made to Dupre in the hours following the release of the tape and her identity being revealed, it would look like any young woman can make a quick buck selling their bodies to the highest bidder. If you hook up with a celebrity or a big wig, great. Everyone will be clamoring for your attention and offering you all kinds of money -- to basically do the same thing you were caught doing before.

It's been talked about before that we now live in a culture where young women see sex as "freedom." Joe Francis has made a living presenting women as willing to do anything in his "Girls Gone Wild" series of DVDs, where women flashed or had sex on camera just for a t-shirt or baseball cap. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera made careers out of their sexy images when they were in their teens. One of the top dolls on the market is the Bratz dolls, featuring teen girls dressed somewhat provocatively and promoting the idea that the only things that matter are makeup and fashion. There's no denying that sex sells. But do we really need to have it saturated into our culture so much that it's all our young women see?

And what does this tell our young men? That all women are whores, you just have to negotiate the price.

With this newest political scandal, it's only gone to promote the idea even more. Dupre is destined to make a ton of money off of this. Penthouse has offered her money to pose nude. Francis was about to offer her $1 million before he found out he already had footage of her in the archives from about 4 years ago. An aspiring singer, her songs that were on her MySpace page are being played on radio stations. And she was able to do all of this because she got paid to have sex.

Lori Ingham can also be read at her daily blog on conchrist.blogspot.com.