ANNA BEY
Just when I thought to honor ANNA BEY with an Honorary Mistress of the Month because I think she'd be (or maybe has been) a successful Mistress, she started the year out by getting married. She moved to Geneva, Switzerland from London, England. She married her love, a man originally from Lebanon, a banker whose privacy she will respect, in a small civil ceremony due to Covid-19 restriction. She'd been with him for about three or four years. She says they'll get around to a proper church wedding after Covid-19.
But that doesn't mean she never was Kept.
I first encountered Anna on YouTube and I must have watched every one of her many professionally made videos in which she talks about elite life; fashion, composure, etiquette, and many other subjects of interest to those women who want to "level up." She starts by addressing her audience as "elegant ladies."
I found that I agree with her on some of what she has to say, though not everything. One thing I strongly do not agree with Anna about is that if a man has women friends he is just not that into you. I'll write more about that later in this month.
I find Anna Bey to be beautiful, charming, intelligent, wise, accomplished, and willing to help other women. She runs her School of Affluence for a reasonable fee, an online finishing school, or you can go to one of her websites where she posts free advice pages to supplement her videos. (You sign up on her mailing list.) I'm convinced that she is sincere in her willingness to share her lifestyle philosophy, that she has learned from harsh experiences in her own life, and that she can be a positive influence on other women. She says no matter what path you've been down, you can always turn around.
Anna believes in self improvement from the inside out though she first became known for modeling fashions she approved of. You can even listen to her video about which handbags that costs thousands are not classy. She even wrote a book on how to be classy.
Yes, she spent $10,000 to get her nose done and wears hair extensions but she's a also into positive affirmations, dream boards, journaling, astrology, and psycho-therapy too, for as long as it takes.
Of course, here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT, we know that there are very many ways to love, and that there are very many ways to be a Mistress. In fact, sometimes, with so many people living together today without marriage, it becomes a bit difficult to know what adultery is. Plus some women knowingly and willingly share men and not everyone is interested in monogamy.
Being a Mistress does not require adultery. It often does but unmarried men have Mistresses too. I'm also sure when I say that being Kept does not require that you be fully supported financially by another person. Though a Classic Mistress expects and gets this, today there are few Classic Mistresses.
I think a woman's independence begins with education and work. Opportunities for women are better now than ever, at least generally in the West, though still not at all equal to what men have overall. Covid-19 has effected women's employment far more than men's: I was told that by a person who works to help women gain job experience at a non-profit. As a result of today's desire for independence, most women like to be working at something, paid or unpaid. Women like to have their own money, which they earn. For Anna this has become teaching and running her business. She advises women to get busy. She also says the reality is most women who gain an elite lifestyle do so through men.
Has Anna benefited from a man's generosity? Surely, for she advises women not to keep cheap men in their lives and says rich wives should not be embarrassed about living off their husbands.
A moment here from me about "Sugar."
A Mistress and her Man are not in "just" a Sugar Baby and Sugar Daddy relationship either, though some of those experiences become loving relationships that endure. We have to be a bit cautious because there are people who sign on to be Sugar Babies who might be living as escorts or a Sugar Daddy might see it as hiring one rather than having relationships.
Sure there may be economic benefits to being a Mistress, but that's not all there is to it. If that's all there is to it, it probably won't last. Mistresses love their men and their men love them too or what's the point? Why would you chance being punished for going against the social norms or get dragged into a terrorizing divorce to tie yourself to another person in a unloving relationship when you could be out there looking for love?
Here in the pages of Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot there are examples of women (and some men) who have been Kept, completely, a little, a while, or a lifetime!
Although I don't know so, I get the feeling Anna has been Kept, without knowing if the man or men were married. I want to say that many women have experienced being in a extra-marital relationship for a while, didn't like it or did, but the experience didn't stop them from one day having a career or a legal marriage if they wanted one.
I will admit, though, that while I watched dozens of Anna Bey videos, the thought kept running through my head, "Is she a Mistress? She'd be a good lifestyle coach for Mistresses." The reason was primarily because of her emphasis on obtaining a partner, a man, who does help a woman financially, that also helps her - as she helps him - "level up," a term I get while wishing there was a better way to put it.
Why not aspire to better and greater for yourself and your children?
Well, the condemnation of Anna is fierce, and it begins and does not end with the term Gold Digger, which she addresses in one of her videos. She says a Gold Digger is a person only into it for money and her high financial standards do not mean she is one. One rake considers her a "former yacht girl" implying she once lived a life of travel and leisure in exchange for casual sex thereby ruining herself for love. (I think of Groupies and think many of them went for the casual sex without the luxury and in some cases any love. There's a lot of raunchy and not elegant aspects to Rock and Roll.) In an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine in 2018, Anna admitted to having some experience with the jet set and boating scene. A frightening experience lead her to decide she needed to find a better way to partake in the rich life. Implied is that she could've been entrapped. She started as a blogger with a site called Jet Set Babe in about 2012 and expanded from there.
Other women, who ought to take down their videos now, attacked Anna with claims that she's a fake because they didn't believe she had a man or was living affluently.
I have a problem with the attitude. You see, if we condemned every person who once was a nobody with nothing but had aspirations and worked hard on themselves we'd be condemning a hell of a lot of people. Most people aren't born with a lot of advantages. We'd be condemning people such as the author of Sex and the Single Girl and a long time Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Hurley Brown, who influenced a generation beginning in the 1960's. We could even find fault with First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis who started out in an elite world but still "leveled up" and believed a woman should do this for her children, not just herself.*
I've also read attacks on Anna from people who seem to think we shouldn't dare try to be more than we got born into; these posters can't be Americans!
Anna has said publicly in interviews that she does not think she could love a man who was poor. That's her honesty. Some people think that way and won't say it. The other side of this is that being obsessed with status can turn a person into a person who's loosing their soul. She is wary of that. She says we are all human, we all make mistakes, and while striving for elegance we must be careful not to get into the perfectionism of elegance extremism.
Another reason I think of Anna as an Honorary Mistress is that she's pragmatic. You see, Anna basically sees femininity in a traditional way, the way until very recently in history most women had to. She sees that it's still a man's world. So some of what she has to say is just what most every older woman I knew growing up thought. Anna isn't "conservative" in thinking her way. (If you think a child needs a daddy, you're conservative.) A man needs to show he can support a woman and a family before he can be in a relationship that could lead to children.
He pays for dates and if he shows off his expensive car to you it's to show you he can support you.
If he is not using some his earnings to help you succeed as a woman, then you may find yourself living like an unmarried woman when "off the market" in marriage to him.
Anna calls the men worth having "high value" men but she also admits that in order to meet wealthy men and keep them you most often have to gain status too. Initially this is about how you look but it's also how you walk and talk, your manners, and the boundaries you set.
Anna Bey, about 35, was born Aija Raty and grew up in Stockholm, Sweden with parents who are professionals. Her mother comes from Russian heritage. After high school, at about 19, she moved to Italy, a country she loves, living in Rome. Her first boyfriend came from money and showed her the good life. She knew she wanted that life. As a self improvement lifestyle coach, she tells her students it takes time to transform. Hers is ongoing. She is multi lingual, has some marketing background, and last summer attended a Swiss "finishing school" to improve her knowledge of entertaining, which she can then pass onto her students.
I will admit, so far I haven't heard Anna talk about being Kept, being a Mistress, or advising women that they should aim for marriage though she has strong ideas about how to avoid bad boys and men who don't treat a woman as his priority. I did find one video where she condemns cheating. Perhaps it's her world view or the words she uses that seem to indicate that she's aware of alternative lifestyles.
Please continue on this month to read about Anna!
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If interested in Helen Gurley Brown or Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, look for posts about them within this blog's archive using the search feature.
* In a book written by singer-songwriter Carly Simon who was good friends with Jackie, Jackie advised her to marry up, to think of her children. Carly wrote a book also about her life with ex-husband James Taylor and his Mistress Evie was profiled in this blog.
Research for this month's posts including watching dozens of videos by and about Anna Bey, pro and con, reading internet news articles, as well as looking at her web sites, images, and so on. Interviews she willing did tended to be headlined to sensationalize, and gave me the impression she was not being reported accurately or heard. She is not a matchmaker, for instance, nor is she a dating coach and in upleveling she's guiding you on how to have a better life, not guaranteeing a woman will marry a billionaire.
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