“As the summer progressed, it was clear that they were pursuing a different direction in food service that was not in alignment with my brand.”

Those were the understated words of celebrity chef Donatella Arpaia, whose business partners recently decided to hire strippers as waitresses at their East Hampton restaurant and invited wealthy clients to an “after party” with the lovely ladies.

Ugh. This is what it means to be a professional chef? A young woman reading the news these days might be inclined to wonder: Are there any gentlemen left out there? And where can one find them?

Certainly not the halls of Congress. According to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, fellow legislators said things to her like “Good thing you’re working out, because you wouldn’t want to get porky!”

Another one offered a different take, squeezing her waist after her pregnancy and telling her not to lose too much weight because “I like my girls chubby!”

And the gentlemen aren’t online either, where hackers are going to extraordinary and illegal lengths to procure naked pictures of celebrities from their own personal computers.

Perhaps none of this is new. Congress has always had dirty old men, restaurateurs have always used cleavage to make money and naked pictures have always been a hot commodity — now it’s just much easier to send them around.

But is there a way to escape this kind of sliminess in one’s own life?

In decades past, the maturity process started a little younger. Veteran social critic Midge Decter notes, “High school is now considered too young, but back in ancient times, i.e., my day, it wasn’t, and many high school sweethearts I went to school with ended up married not too, too long after.”

Maybe there was an advantage to having women teach men how to behave at a younger age. Fatherhood, which tends to make men kinder and a little more aware that they are not the center of the universe, has been delayed as well. Now the man-child stage can last well into a guy’s 40s.

The Internet has become an echo chamber of objectification. Our cultural heroes are philanderers. Bad behavior is universally acceptable. When a man started chatting me up in an upscale bar a number of years ago and I told him I wasn’t interested, he loudly told my boyfriend who had just returned from the restroom, that I was a “cold bitch.” No one at the bar even glanced up from their martinis.

On college campuses, there is currently an official campaign now called “bystander intervention” that asks young men to step in if they suspect their friends are going to sexually assault a woman. Is this something that men needed to be told 50 years ago?

Men now expect women to behave like men — welcoming any and all attention. And why shouldn’t they? That’s all they see in popular culture. We tell boys that girls are their equals, indeed that boys and girls are really the same. What we don’t tell boys is to respect girls.

It’s gotten so bad that a group called the Network of enlightened Women (NeW), founded by Karin Agness, hosts an annual “Gentlemen’s Showcase,” a nationwide contest to identify and honor college gentlemen. Just to encourage such behavior.

To participate, women nominate college men by submitting a picture on Facebook with a letter on why the nominee is a gentleman. Winners receive a small scholarship.

Among the nominees this spring was TJ Mason at the University of Virginia. The letter about him read in part: “Yes, he embodies the classic notions of chivalry — I have never seen him fail to hold the door or treat any woman with less than the utmost respect and humility . . . As a member of the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, he goes head to head with women on a daily basis and displays a level of respect and esteem for female intellect that I am positive all NeW women can appreciate. . . Rather than taking advantage of the ‘hook-up culture’ that pervades all college campuses, TJ still believes in dating; he is more interested in getting to know women who share his values.”

No word whether he’s single.