The New Way of Slut Shaming

Jen McQueeney

I was sitting in a dorm room with my boyfriend at the time and his two best friends. It
was a Sunday morning, and we were discussing the events of the previous night. One of the
guys, Chad*, was upset because he felt like he had missed out on an opportunity to hook up with
a girl that hung out with us when we got back from the party Saturday. He sat on his bed,
scrolling through her Facebook pictures, commenting on how he thought she was sexy as hell.
I sat quietly as the guys gave their input on the situation. After minutes of judgement of the girl,
Chad* looked at me and said, Im sorry if what Im about to say is misogynistic. I gritted my
teeth and gestured for him to continue, already feeling my blood pressure begin to rise. Im
pretty sure this girl has been with a lot of guys, and I just cant call a girl beautiful if shes
hooked up with a bunch of people. I shook my head as he looked to his friends for backup. I
briefly gave my opinion, stating that I dont think any girl should be judged for her sexual
activity and that I felt he was being hypocritical because he had hooked up with numerous girls
that I knew of, but didnt see anything wrong with that. His argument was I just cant call a slut
beautiful.
Slut shaming is an epidemic that needs to be addressed. The term is relatively new,
although the act has been around for a long time. There is a sexual double standard between men
and women. More often than not, women are shamed by their choices in their sex lives while
men are praised for things such as having multiple partners. With the coming of the digital age

and new technology, new ways of shaming women have come about. From childhood, through
school, and for the rest of their lives, slut shaming effects women in negative ways.
The idea that women should act or be treated differently towards sex started as early as
Ancient Rome. In Lewis Webbs article, Shame transfigured: Slut-shaming from Rome to
cyberspace, he explains that The male control of female sexuality was a central component of
Roman ideology; women of the Roman Republic were (typically) subject to the authority of their
father or husband or legal guardian. Normative female sexual behavior was restricted to
conventionally sanctioned partners: the womans husband. There was even a word equivalent
to slut in the Latin language: meretrix. Women who were married were seen as morally
perfect, where as a woman who engaged in sexual activity outside of marriage was seen as a
sinner and faced serious consequences such as exile or even death. These ideas of womens
sexuality being controlled and punished continued to flourish for hundreds of years and into
society today.
The first time I experienced slut shaming was when I was only eleven years old and in
middle school. With the start of middle school, I was awkward, uncomfortable, and terrified. I
was terrified of all the new kids around me and terrified to be starting at a new school for the first
time in my life. The last thing I thought I needed to worry about was my body distracting the
boys. On the first day of classes, we listened as our homeroom teachers read through the student
handbook and stated the dress code policy. No student was allowed to wear shirts without sleeves
or showing too much of our chest. Shorts or skirts had to be no more than three inches from our
knee. I understood what a dress code was; I had one in elementary school. But what I learned

that day was that, according to our teachers, the purpose of the dress code was to prevent girls
from showing too much skin and hindering the boys from learning. On that day, I was told that it
was my responsibility as a girl to cover myself and be aware of how I dress for the benefit of
boys. This was the first time I thought of my body as anything sexual, and as a prepubescent girl,
I felt ashamed.
Dress codes have become a popular topic since the rise of slut shaming, and girls
everywhere are being effected by the strict policies. In October of 2015, high school student
Carey Burgess from South Carolina posted a status on Facebook directed to her schools
administration after she had been threatened with in-school suspension and sent home by a
teacher who claimed that her skirt was too short. She expressed her frustration and humiliation
with how the administrator handled the situation. Burgess says she chose her outfit that day as
part of a professional appearance requirement on an assignment she had to present for her
class. However, she was forced to call her mother, crying in front of her peers, to pick her up
from school. Burgess uses sarcasm in her post stating, I learned something very important about
myself: I am a whore. So maybe I am in the wrong. Maybe our society isnt yet advanced enough
to handle 3 inches of my thigh(Huffington Post). Burgess highlights a very important point in
her status. Teachers have begun to teach young people, usually girls, that what they are wearing
is more important than their education. By teaching students that the purpose of a dress code is to
shame girls and benefit boys, todays idea that the female body is a sexual object for men to look
at and control is not far from what the Romans believed.

The rise of social media has contributed to new effects of slut shaming. Amanda Hess
says in her article, The Shame Game, that slut shaming evolved into a diffuse, casual
phenomenon. It dovetails with the emergence of social media because our bodies are perpetually
on display. Women have always been judged by their appearance, but now there's a relentless,
omnipresent surveillance accelerating things. Ultimately, the result is the same: the sexual
policing of women. The effects of slut shaming through digital media are serious. Recently, an
incident involving 20 year old singer Kehlani Parrish brought the issue to the media. Kehlanis
rumored ex posted a photo of the two of them in bed to his Instagram. Immediately, people on
Twitter and Instagram began to harshly criticize her because the public thought she was still with
Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving. Misogynistic and slut shaming comments led to a
trending hashtag against her across all social media. That night, Kehlani posted and deleted a
picture to her Instagram of an IV in her arm saying she had attempted to end her life. The
following day, singer Chris Brown took to Twitter to express his opinion on the situation. Brown
tweeted, There is no attempting suicide. Stop flexing for the gram. Doing shit for sympathy so
them comments under your pics don't look so bad. It is very ironic that Brown is the one
accusing Kehlani of faking her attempted suicide, seeing that he is a known abuser and has
severe anger management problems. He is not the voice of reason or anything close to morally
perfect. The biggest problem in this scenario is the fact that the public immediately attacked
Kehlani after seeing one picture on social media and jumping to conclusions that she was a
cheating whore. This is proof that women are judged much more harshly because Chris Brown
continues to work with top artists and succeed in the music industry despite his history of

violence against women and rumored infidelity while Kehlani was driven to attempt suicide and
was even criticized for that. (observer.com)
Outside of the music industry and celebrities, this type of slut shaming is effecting
teenage girls as well. In my high school, the word slut was used without hesitation and true
understanding by everyone I knew, myself included. The slut shaming in my school had become
so common that it seemed normal to us. We were oblivious to the harm we were causing by
contributing to the judgmental conversations about our peers. When I first realized how serious
and disgusting this issue was, I was seventeen years old and a junior in high school. One of my
best friends and I were the only two girls in a class of twenty. We had all become very close in
the class and my friend and I found it amusing to listen to the boys discuss things like video
games and sports. These boys were my friends, and I think that is why they felt comfortable
talking about anything in front of us, even talking about girls. However, like many people I knew
at the time and still know today, they took it too far and into a very inappropriate conversation
that I will never forget. One day in class, we all decided to make a group chat with everyone so
that we could text each other. Unfortunately, the guys thought this would be a good opportunity
to exchange the nude pictures of different girls that they each had saved on their phones. They
sent the pictures they had in the group chat for all of us to see, trading them like baseball cards,
trying to impress each other with who they had and how many. My friend and I were instantly
offended of course. We quickly removed ourselves from the group chat and blocked their
numbers as they laughed at our reaction. All I could think was how mortified the girls in the
pictures would be if they ever knew about this. I knew for a fact that many of the girls had sent
those pictures to their boyfriends, trusting them to keep them private and to respect them. They

had no idea that at least eighteen other boys that they had never even spoken to had now seen
them naked. From this moment on, I understood that slut shaming was an actual issue and that
many people were not aware that they were participating in the problem.
This type of slut shaming combined with cyber bullying is very common due to the new
technology available. In Temitayo Fagbenles Online 'Shaming' A New Level Of Cyberbullying
For Girls, it is suggested that teenagers today aren't necessarily crueler than they were in the
1600s. It's just that now when we chastise each other, everybody who has access to the Internet
can see it. And once that picture or video is out, you can't be completely safe in your mind that
the past won't creep up on you at some random time. This is the new scarlet letter. The
invention of sites such as Facebook as effected slut shaming because the audience is much larger.
Fagbenle interviewed several high school girls who had been involved in this form of
cyberbullying. One 16 year old was recorded on video by her boyfriend without her knowledge
and a video of an intimate moment between them was shared online for everyone to see. The
video acquired over 250 comments including countless harsh words like, your life is officially
shot LMAO," and "I think she gonna cut her veins when she see this. When asked their opinion
on the situation, many female peers of the girl in the video responded said that they often feel the
need to shame girls who have improper behavior. One girl responded in Fagbenles article by
saying, "They do it to themselves, half the time we can't even blame the guys. It makes me sad
to think that this girl who has been violated and humiliated now is being shamed on top of it all
because she is not acting proper. Kids as young as high school need to understand that it is
never okay to call someone a slut, even if theyre kidding or say it conversationally with close
friends. If people become comfortable shaming girls casually, they will begin to think that it is a

girls responsibility to be pureat all times and that it is her fault if an incident such as leaked
photos happens. It took me years to recognize that I was participating in slut shaming, and I
believe that until it hits you in the face, you do not realize the consequences.
Through my experiences in life so far, I have learned that slut shaming comes in many
forms and that it is never okay. Even after making the personal decision to never call a girl a slut
again or even participate in a conversation that is shaming or judging a girl for her sexuality, I
still think there are situations where more could have and can be done. Times when I found
myself with people who began to have a conversation that I thought was inappropriate, such as
my boyfriends friend Chad*, I should have stopped him after he warned me what he was going
to say was misogynistic. Or at the very least, I could have and should have told him after how
destructive his words were and that he was contributing to a much larger issue than he was even
aware of. And its not just up to the women of the world to fix this. Men can make a change. My
boyfriend could have stopped his friend from saying those things. Girls should not be shamed for
their sexuality. Ever. They should not be shamed for wearing a tank top at school and distracting
the boys. They should not be shamed for sending pictures to a boy. They should not be shamed
for allegedly cheating or for attempting suicide after being bullied online. They should not be
shamed for being a victim of cyberbullying after a video is put online. Men and women
everywhere have the power to end slut shaming by starting the new trend of not saying the word
slut. It is possible to make kids more aware of the effects of what they are saying by having
more realistic dress codes that do not target girls, disciplining those who contribute in
cyberbullying from mean tweets to a celebrity, to hurtful comments on a peers Facebook, and
especially those cruel few who post private pictures or videos that girls never intended to be

public, and even something as simple as educating your boyfriends friend after saying
misogynistic comments.