This past semester, I had just started hanging out with a new guy friend. We didn’t really know each other that well, but had quickly become close in a short time. One night he asked me what my “body count” was. Of course I replied with “none of your damn business,” and he immediately went off on a rant about today’s culture and how girls are sluts for sleeping with more than two guys. He then asked a question that is still stuck in my head. “You talk about how all these guys are attractive, but what if you slept with every single one? What do you think is going to happen when you meet a nice guy and he asks how many guys you’ve had sex with? What are you going to say? What do you think he’s going to say?” I was absolutely shocked by this. I think of myself as an attractive twenty-year-old girl and if I want to sleep with one guy, or I want to sleep with twenty guys, it shouldn’t matter to anyone else besides me, as long as I’m being safe about it. If a guy is going to judge me for that, I do not want him in my life anyway, right? This is where slut shaming takes hold of culture today.
Slut shaming is defined as, “The act of criticizing a woman for her real or presumed sexual activity, or for behaving in ways that someone thinks are associated with her real or presumed sexual activity.” It is a form of social stigma mostly directed toward young women, especially college aged, and feminists today are attempting to remove the word from everyone’s vocabulary.
Slut shaming is completely unacceptable. Relationships and hooking up is a major part of college cultural today. As a college girl, I am pressured to dress “hot” and “sexy,” but one wrong move and I have crossed the line into “slut territory.” Basically if you do not wear tight, revealing clothes, you’re a prude. But if you do, you’re a whore. Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Making girls embarrassed of their sexuality is WRONG. By putting labels on women, we are saying that feminism is a joke and by not fighting back we are basically allowing men to see us in this way. Wearing a tight dress does not mean that someone is “asking for it,” it means that she is proud of the way she looks. Contrary to popular belief, I do not do everything that I do for male attention. The clothes that I wear and the makeup that I buy has nothing to do with attracting men, it is about what I feel confident and comfortable in.
What a lot of girls do not realize is that slut shaming is not limited to just men. Other girls are just as mean and hurtful as guys. If we continue to judge our peers for hooking up with other guys, we are saying that it is okay for guys to judge us in the same way. One of Tina Fey’s most popular quotes in Mean Girls is, “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it ok for guys to call you sluts and whores.” This was all the way back in 2004 and yet nothing has changed. Instead of judging one another for sexuality, we should be applauding it. Having a one-night stand does not make you less of a person, and it is not your place to judge me for doing the same.
Let me give a shout out to the men who slut shame. It’s counterproductive. Calling a girl a slut is not going to make her want to have sex with you. It is not going to make anyone want to have sex with you. You come off looking like a jerk who will be going home from the bar alone. Where did this double standard come from? Why is it that if a man has multiple partners, he is praised, but if a girl does, she is attacked and criticized with rumors and shaming? How is that fair? How is that right?
I am not an object for anyone to ridicule when they are bored. My sex life is more than an animal carcass being picked over by the vultures of the world. I do not listen and I do not care about your judgement. As Drake says, “I’m just doing me and you could never understand it.”