Just as the homophobic-fueled bullying of some children has made them so miserable and hopeless that they have chosen to end their lives to escape it, slut shaming does this as well.
What is slut-shaming exactly? It takes on a lot of forms, but is basically the harassment of a girl for being perceived as slutty. She could have actually been sexual, or simply have been the victim of rumors. (And to be clear: being sexual should not be perceived as shameful in the first place.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again,
Slut: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation is a great book. Bullying of any kind is terrible and unacceptable, but slut-shaming is a really abhorrent type. Firstly, it reinforces the incorrect and sexist idea that women shouldn't be sexual and should be ashamed of being sexual. Um... it (often) takes two people to complete a sexual act, and girls often come out of it with the short stick. Talk about your double standards... this is the big one. Teenage boys who have sex are heroes while teenage girls who have sex are whores. Doesn't that seem a little... uneven? As teenagers usually have sex with other teenagers, shouldn't the treatment of those sexual acts be equal? They're both whores!! Nah, just kidding... they're both fine! As long as they're using protection.
they look so silly in neon colors...
The second part of slut-shaming that is really awful is that it is often girls doing the shaming. Girls are often the first ones to police each other's behavior, and it is us who often keep ourselves from progressing. And I've quoted it before and I'll quote it again, as Tina Fey says in Mean Girls, "You have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores! It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores!" We, women, girls, are the ones affected by this language, so we have to eradicate it. That's the simple part.
I just watched Easy A, and I have to say that I loved it.
The nub and the gist of the story is that Olive (Emma Stone) helps a gay friend escape further torment by pretending to have sex with him at a party. After that, he's saved, and Olive descends into ostracism, but getting payment from the sad and the lonely to have fake sex. While her male customers all benefit from this fix, Olive gets sent farther and farther into the social tundra of Slutland.
One of the things I really liked about this movie was how strong Olive is. First of all, Emma Stone is
hilarious and Olive was a really strong, female character. Even though the movie is about how she let all these people believe things about her, she remains funny, and mostly positive. When the slut-shaming does start getting to her, she then does take some action and webcasts her confession of... not having done anything. Except lie.
Another thing I thought the movie did really well was make the sexual double standard for men and women really explicit. At the party, Olive's gay friend exits their pretend tryst to high-fives and people looking at him in awe. When Olive exits the room and walks down the same hall, people look at her pityingly. Olive's best friend is quick to believe the rumors, and her condemnation of Olive is seen as really bad. People picket Olive... but no one pickets the guys who claim to have been involved with her.
The It Gets Better campaign has done a great job at getting high-profile people, and regular ones, to make videos telling young gay kids that while it may suck in high school, life does get better. As noted in the
Bust post,
Just try and imagine how wonderful it would have been if folks like Madonna (c'mon, MADONNA!), and President Obama, and Ellen Degeneris, and CBS, all had come out with a message for young women that slut-shaming is bullshit, all people are sexual and if the other students can['t] deal with a girl who has sexual desires, it means they are sexists, which is just as bad as racists or homophobes?
But also that,
We discussed starting a similar "it gets better" video series here at BUST, and when I asked what we might want to call it, one editor shouted out "how about, 'it doesn't get better but you won't care as much.'"
So... yeah. While videos supporting the victims of slut shaming might be heartening and nice, what I think should happen is a campaign to change young people's attitudes about sex. Wanting to wait to have sex isn't a bad thing. But taking that belief and making it the cornerstone of a woman's worth is one of the worst social forces out there, and it is literally killing girls. We need to get rid of purity balls and slut shaming and the whole idea of purity all-together. People are people. You'd be hard pressed to find pure water anywhere, let alone a pure person. Instead of teaching girls that their self worth exists in the condition of their hymen, we should teach them that self-worth exists in themselves. In their abilities to be good people. In their actions. In their friendships. Sex is a part of life, and if you want to take part in it, you're not a bad person. And if other people want to have sex, good for them. As long as they're using proper protection. All this bullshit about counting sex partners and fabricating self-worth through a person's perceived sex life is unhealthy.
As Olive said at the end of Easy A, before she rode off on a tractor with Penn Bagdley, "I think I'll lose my virginity to him. Maybe in five minutes, maybe tonight, maybe six months from now, or maybe on the night of our wedding. Either way, it's really none of your business."
