What's Erin Andrews' Next Move ?

Should Erin Andrews Do Playboy?
If you are a hot-blooded male with access to the internet, chances are you heard about sexy ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews getting videotaped naked through a peephole in her hotel room this past week.

Then you went looking for the video. Don’t lie. You did it either out of curiosity to see if such a video actually existed, or because you wanted to watch it, plain and simple.

How do I know this? Because the top searches on Google the day after the news came out were “Erin Andrews,” “Erin Andrews naked,” “Erin Andrews peephole video,” or even the more straight-to-the-point search: “How can I watch the Erin Andrews peephole video?”

Privacy schmivacy

By all accounts, it was a huge invasion of privacy, and something I wouldn’t wish on my worst (hot) enemy. However, in all brutal and blunt honesty, it was the best thing that could have ever happened to Erin Andrews’ career.

Before this happened, Andrews was already an internet sensation. Pictures of her at various games can be found everywhere. Blogs shoot from obscurity to getting thousands of hits just by putting her name in a post or an article. She’s been one of sports’ biggest sex symbols without even playing a minute of a game.

Even people who had somehow not heard of Erin Andrews were searching for the video. “Aaron Andrews” and “Erin Anderson” were also top Google searches. The fact of the matter is, people heard about this and wanted to see for themselves what all the fuss was about, even if they had no idea what they were looking for.

Some people have even purposed the theory that Andrews and her people set this up as a publicity stunt. If you have ever heard her speak, you’ll know that she was never comfortable with her notoriety because of her looks, and a PR stunt that brings attention to her looks isn’t her style. It’s just a ridiculous theory, but the fact that it’s even out there should speak volumes about just how much this scandal will blow up her career.

Very voyeuristic

Our society is one that is delving deeper and deeper into voyeurism. With technology, we can watch people all over the world from the safety of our own computer chairs. Men will watch women do the most menial things on a webcam -- brush their hair, eat an apple, put on makeup -- and pay for it.

When the Iiternet princess, the woman that has endless pictures of her just walking from place to place, gets secretly videotaped in the most private of moments, you better believe that people out there will care. So, what comes next for Ms. Andrews? The way I see it, she has three options:

The first way to deal with this is to pretend it never happened. Wait a couple of weeks, then get back on the horse, bury yourself in your job, endure the much noisier catcalls, and hope that eventually people will forget about it. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. When you go from famous to infamous, things like this just don’t go away. They linger.

The second is the route that she seems to be taking right now: go after the guy. Have her and ESPN exhaust every possible resource in tracking down the peeping Tom and, if they find him, take him to court and try to bring him down in a very public trial.

The third and most controversial solution is to pose for Playboy. Thousands of people have seen her naked in a circumstance that she couldn’t control. It’s time for her to get Hugh Hefner on the phone and take the control back. Instead of the lasting image of her being a fuzzy, creepy video, she can make it a classy photo shoot that takes pride in her body on her terms. It can give your career a boost. Just ask Lisa Rinna.

the one-finger salute

I don’t want to say “embrace this,” because she was still the victim of a crime, but she has to get past it one way or another. She can do so by laying low, by fighting back, or she can do it with her head held high and a middle finger in the air to the guy who did this to her.