Why Men Have Every Reason To Want 'An Ayesha Curry'
In this unpredictable life, a few certainties exist.
The sun will rise in the morning, the moon will come at night and Ayesha Curry, wife of NBA superstar Stephen Curry, will trend again on Twitter.
When? It's impossible to tell. But when Ayesha does, it will almost certainly be to compare and contrast her to other women.
That's just the way things go now, and that's definitely the way they went last week when it happened on two separate occasions.
First, Ayesha was a hot topic on Monday -- without doing practically anything -- when the subject of recording artist Kehlani allegedly cheating on three-time NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving took over Twitter.
She was a hot topic again on Friday when it was announced that she will soon be starring in her own cooking show on the Food Network.
Much of the most notable talk, though, wasn't about the actual show. Instead, the highlight of Friday's round of Ayesha-related conversation revolved around these kinds of memes that served as preemptive parodies of her show.
Clearly, these tweets were meant to ridicule and spark backlash. The two targets? Both the idea of an Ayesha Curry/whore dichotomy and Ayesha's active role in creating that dichotomy.
The genesis
That role largely, if not completely, comes down to two tweets she sent out four months ago.
Everyone's into barely wearing clothes these days huh? Not my style. I like to keep the good stuff covered up for the one who matters — Ayesha Curry (@ayeshacurry) December 6, 2015
For many, the tweets did just enough to be filed under slut-shaming. But besides those posts, she hasn't done much, if anything, to antagonize anyone since.
If anything, Ayesha distanced herself from the obvious direction in which some people ran with her remarks.
So there's a legitimate question, then, if it's fair to even pin a reputation specifically upon her based on two tweets she back-tracked from within hours, four months ago.
After all, we let celebrities habitually sneak-diss us all the time. Kim Kardashian basically told us she was too busy counting money to pay attention to criticism from broke peasants like us.
sorry I'm late to the party guys I was busy cashing my 80 million video game check & transferring 53 million into our joint account — Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) March 8, 2016
Whatever, it happens.
The movement
But there was something, nonetheless, for Ayesha to distance herself from. That "something" is what we'll refer to as the "Get you an Ayesha Curry" movement, for obvious reasons.
Right.
If Ayesha Curry is trending for being -- or, at least, being seen as -- a wholesome woman and good wife, some might call that a breath of fresh air.
The problem
But any serious look at this movement can't deny the problematic side of "Get you an Ayesha Curry..." and that side often comes after the "dot-dot-dot."
In instances like these, there's much more than just praise for Ayesha Curry going on. It's praise for Ayesha, plus slander for this woman or that woman.
It's "be like this or you're a hoe." It's lifting someone up to consciously put another down.
It is, pretty much, slut-shaming. So when it seems like the majority of people praising Ayesha are not so much complimenting her but simply using her to knock other women, people are gonna call it out.
And those comparisons do deserve to get called out, granted. There is no question there.
But somewhere within the collective backlash against such comparisons there's been an idea floating around that Ayesha is not that great.
The appeal
In the interest of not specifically talking about a specific person, and another man's wife, just to prove a point, let's just consider the qualities that have been attributed to this image of "an" Ayesha Curry.
That (admittedly superficial) image is pretty much of a woman who is a good mother, a loyal companion, good looking, sweet, supportive, fashionable and a beast in the kitchen. It's the image of a woman who celebrates her man and makes it clear she'll always be more concerned with impressing him than any others.
On paper, that package of qualities will always be highly desirable (amongst the many different desirable packages out there, mind you) -- at least that's the case for this writer. There are really no comparisons to other women needed to make that clear, either.
And for the people who want to take their women to Sunday service, I'd imagine the quality of being "God-fearing" would be the biggest plus of them all.
Is it ridiculous that Ayesha Curry trends out of nowhere because everyone wants to proclaim that they're out there trying to get someone like her? Sure.
Is it even more ridiculous that the people doing the proclaiming seem to go out of their way to bash other women? Definitely.
Is the Ayesha Curry phenomenon even more ridiculous because a woman like her isn't even that great? Nah, miss me with that.
