Is Erika Jayne’s career over?

There is nothing I love more than examining the situation that is Real Housewife of Beverly Hills star and recording artist Erika Girardi aka Erika Jayne.

In fact, I love it so much I and my good friend Shannon decided to drive by the 13 million dollar love nest of Tom and Erika blasting her hit song: Its expensive to be me a few weeks ago.

Erika is larger than life. But it’s no secret that the 49-year-old sex pot is in big troubs with a lot of people for allegedly helping her attorney husband hide millions of dollars stolen from victims Tom Girardi represented in court.

Begging the big question: Can Erika’s formerly burgeoning career survive this seismic shake-up?

Hollywood is filled with celebrities that have endured massive scandals and shake ups: Robert Downey Jr., Brett Ratner, Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey, Ellen, Tommy Lee and NFL superstar Michael Vick just to name a few. Not to mention a slew of reality stars like Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute from Vanderpump Rules.

In fact, there is a multi-billion dollar business for ambitious attorneys doing damage control and ‘crisis management’.

The attorneys pride themselves on being Spin doctors and having the ability to turn bad press into a powerful career boost.

Given the allegations against Erika. Can she come out of this and continue building her fanbase?

I don’t think so.

Let’s face it, Erika is not the world’s best singer. In fact, I strongly suspect she is either lip-syncing or using auto-tune on stage. She’s a good dancer on stage and she knows how to gin up her audience, but she’s an aging performer whose career is built upon her sex appeal and her campi-ness. The thing with Erika is her entire schtick is built on being a ridiculous cliché. The absurdity of her marriage to a man 33 years her senior and half her size and her enduring sexual attraction to him, is part of the show.

The fact that this larger than life heroic attorney, was using his millions to support her very expensive lifestyle, her looks, to pay for her glam squad, to gift her $200,000 Cartier rings and million dollar Chagall paintings, private jets, etc, is a huge part of the mystique.

Now we know that situation was a façade. The money wasn’t coming from hard work, it was coming from victims who were lied to by Girardi. Not to mention, as beautiful as she is, her sex appeal can’t last much longer, if at all now that she’s well in to the menopause years.

We all enjoyed the dichotomy of the buttoned up, Housewife also being an unapologetic sex kitten making music videos where she is rolling around in money singing songs like,

How Many F*cks do I give? ZERO,  ‘XXPEN$IVE to be me’, “PAINKILLR,”

But the words from the songs on the hit list are a little hard to swallow given what we now know. The image of the bleach blonde sex pot shamelessly throwing her money around with reckless abandon at luxuries that no normal person could afford, while burn victims are waiting on checks to get their surgeries is not something one can easily overcome even with the best crisis control team.

Granted the strategy seems pretty obvious: make Erika appear completely oblivious to the source of Tom’s money, make it look like she actually was making all of her own money (they will mention she made a nice salary on the show and from her concerts), and finally, make it look like Tom was terribly abusive and intimidating and she was not allowed to know anything about the money even if she asked.

I saw her mentioning Betty Broderick, so clearly that’s an avenue the crisis managers are going to drive down.

That said, even if that’s all successful and fans feel Erika did not knowingly or willfully steal money from these clients of Tom’s, she comes out looking weak-willed and easy to manipulate.

She becomes a 50-year-old woman renting an apartment in Encino, trying to get gigs on a very slim budget. What happens to Erika Jayne when she can’t afford the glam squad and has to do all her own hair and makeup?

I just don’t see how Erika can win this. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think she will ever be poor. Erika will attach herself to another big name in an effort to regain some clout, but the damage will have been done.

There are rumors now that she’s dating Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber’s manager, but I don’t think an attachment to Scooter is gonna do anything to pump up her image.

All of the things that contributed to the magic of Erika Jayne go away with Mr. Girardi’s reputation and wealth.