We’ve all felt the pressure. Whether women are being told to be pure and chaste, or being cast as sexual objects in the media, the message is the same: as a woman, our only value lies in our body and what we do –or don’t do– with our body.
This is most commonly described as the virgin/whore dichotomy and can be seen in nearly any establishment or ideal that focuses on women.
In the US, we are experiencing some serious moral confusion over women’s bodies. The confusion is borne out of the intersection of hypersexualization in the media and the conservative agenda that pushes abstinence and demands decreased funding for Planned Parenthood.
Take beauty pageants, for example. Many contestants tout traditional values such as abstinence until marriage and female purity — immediately after strutting around in a bikini on stage. However, the very fiber of these pageants is, well, beauty, and outward appearance. Like any other realm that places females in a challenger role, from running for president to auditioning for a movie role, the foundation is built upon the notion that sex sells.
One telling example of this disturbing dichotomy is former Miss California Carrie Prejean, who gained favor because she promoted herself as a virgin, waiting for marriage. Americans all over the country ‘respected’ her for her purity while drooling over the breast implants that the Miss California organization subsidized for her. Then, when some racy photos of her came out, the Miss California winner lost her crown due to “breach of contract.”
This story is rife with contradictions and is a very telling example of the short-circuit we encounter when it comes to women and their sexuality. Are we supposed to be pure …or are we supposed to be sexual objects? I propose that much of this dichotomy is derived from fear of female sexuality.
Women are hidden behind burkas or victim-blamed in rape cases because the idea of self-possessed female sexuality is subconsciously threatening.
In a Jezebel interview with Jessica Valenti, author of ‘The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women,’ answers a question about the intricacies of female sexuality and the complexity of the female orgasm. The supposition being that these “purists,” or people obsessed with female purity, simply do not understand female sexuality. This leads to fear, and fear leads to ignorance, anger, and sometimes violence.
A sexy woman is less terrifying if she’s only an image in a magazine; a sexual object without feeling, desire, or all the mysteries of her sexuality. But God forbid she’s a real-life woman taking ownership of her sexuality.
And the lack of information from a young age does not help. In the US, the government allocates funding for abstinence-only sex education in public high schools. With federal funding, which many schools need, and pressure from religious groups in the US, many schools choose to teach this abstinence-only sex education. Not only is abstinence-only education harmful to teens in that it paradoxically promotes more teenage pregnancies, the spread of STDs, and abortions, but it often aims its rhetoric at young girls.
In The Purity Myth, Valenti outlines some strategies used by abstinence only sex educators to push the purity agenda on teen girls. One method involves a male volunteer from the class and a piece of tape. The educator places the tape on the boy’s arm and pulls it off again. The piece of tape is presented to the class and the educator exclaims, “See how dirty the tape is? This is what happens when you have sex before marriage.” The idea being that the girl is the tape, and when she comes into contact with the opposite sex before the sanctity of marriage, she becomes “dirty.”
This and many other examples of defining a woman’s virginity as a “gift” for her future husband, only to be unwrapped on the wedding night, is the cause of misunderstanding, fear, and the perpetuation of chastity as the standard of female morality.
And this is the real issue. Women wearing itsy-bitsy bikinis or “sexy pirate” costumes on Halloween is not the issue, and these things certainly do not make women ‘sluts’. The issue is that women aren’t the ones taking ownership of their own sexuality.
Valenti talks about the overlap between the agendas of the virginity movement in America and the feminist movement. The question being that both movements are against the hypersexualization of women: “The big difference, of course, is that, with feminists, we’re choosing what kind of sexuality we’d like to put out there; with the virginity movement it’s adults (and a lot of men) deciding what appropriate sexuality is for younger women. It’s anyone and everyone except young women themselves defining young women’s sexuality.”
Shouldn’t we be deciding for ourselves what’s appropriate without the fear of slut-shaming? The thing that many people seem to forget is the will of each individual woman. What if the mostly nude woman on the cover of Vanity Fair reached her lifetime ambition by posing in front of that camera? Is that any less valuable than a woman achieving her goal of becoming a neurosurgeon? Does a woman’s sexuality really define her morality, her intelligence, or her humanity?
We don’t need to to tear down the models in the magazines, or slut-shame the women wearing mini skirts, or tell young women that they must be modest in order to set the balance of men and women at an even keel. The only way we can ever hope to overcome the prejudices against women is to completely divorce the idea of sexuality with morality. We can all start by examining our motivations. So the next time you think about calling a woman a slut for any of the myriad of pre-conditioned reasons, stop, think, and try to see this woman as more than just her body.
Read more: Is Religion Afraid of Women?
When I was 12-years-old, I made a vow to myself to stay a virgin until my knight in shining armor came along and proposed. But I really hadn’t been brought up on Christian values and didn’t consider myself religious, so why save myself for marriage?
Women have every right to dress how they want but why get upset for people calling it how they see it? If I had my breast and ass out every week, twerking and showing my goodies on the internet than I would also expect how I would be perceived as doing it. It’s like dressing like a cop and getting mad at someone for thinking you’re law enforcement. It’s not rocket science. Dress like a streetwalker and people will treat you like one. Don’t dress like a streetwalker and guess what!?! I’m sure y’all get the idea.
Thank you this really helped I have been called a slut since 5th grade because I wore one pair of shorts and they came above a little below mid-thigh on a field trip. I’m not a slut I’m only in 9th grade and haven’t done anything besides kissing a boy.
As a fellow woman, I say that you are allowed to do whatever you want with your body and your life as long as you accept the judgment. If they are not willing to accept judgment you’re obviously not fit for society. Men and Women are both judged harshly for various aspects of their life. And if they think they shouldn’t be judged that immediately takes away all credibility for their opinions and judgment to matter on certain things. So it’s either they accept the judgment and be credible for things or they do not accept judgment for their actions and in doing so they have no credibility in their judgment towards other people. Simple as that. Life sucks for everyone.
I think the word ‘slut’ shouldn’t even be used. I mean you’re judging someone by their basic human desires. Sex is literally the thing that continues the human species. And I also don’t get how someone wearing revealing clothing is automatically deemed a ‘slut’ and are thought to lack self-respect. A person could be wearing 3 layers of clothing and have no self-respect what so ever. A person could also be walking around absolutely naked and have the utmost respect for themselves. But at the end of the day, it is SELF-respect so it doesn’t really matter how much respect you have for that person the only thing that matters is how much respect they have for themselves.
Really, so this is a thing, girls can sleep around and dress in next to nothing clothes and they should be applauded for it? Gurl you are the definition of a slutbag!
When we start noticing and paying attention to these subtle forms of slut shaming, we can decide to change our behavior. Once we do that, we’ll be able to model this rejection of slut-shaming for the people in our lives, from our parents to our friends. They’ll begin to model it for the people in their lives, and so on. That’s how change happens, and we’re all a part of it.
I’ve got no issue with women choosing to be sluts, as long as they stay away from serious relationships all their lives, so when they turn 40 and no one wants to ‘hookup’ with them anymore because; well looks fade and they decide they want children, they will at least let the poor unlucky bastard who ends up marrying them know how many strangers cocks have been in them. Hence no marriage.
I especially get hurt when seeing people like Bella Thorne and Miley Cyrus (in her wrecking ball days) get slut-shamed just for acting or dressing a certain way, which literally doesn’t affect anyone’s life. Honestly, the clothes or expressions aren’t the problems, people who hate and slut-shame are. They’re always the ones who cause drama, unnecessary hate, emotional anguish and furthermore, and the sad thing about it is that they expect us to believe it’s the right thing to do, to literally bully. For example, you also have the fact that if a boy wears a dress, he will be called gay, even though there’s nothing wrong with being gay. Many people, unfortunately, are and will be judgmental. Our society still has a long way to go.
The first step to changing our culture is to change our own behavior. That way, we can model the type of behavior we want to see in an ideal world — a world where we’ve done away with “slut” shaming — and others can follow our lead.