The New York Times takes a good look at the American slut. And even though it always sounds hokey when adults attempt quote teenagers and explain teenage behavior, I actually like the article, for the most part. They start out by examining the supposed reclaimation of the word “slut”:
Like “queer” and “pimp” before it, the word slut seems to be moving away from its meaning as a slur. Or is it?
“It’s definitely a term of familiarity with teens,” said Karell Roxas, a senior editor at Gurl.com, a Web site that addresses issues that affect teenagers. “They’ll say ‘Hi, slut!’ the way my generation would say ‘Hi, chick!’ or ‘Hi, dawg!’ ”
Even among adults, the word is used to demonstrate voraciousness: “coffee slut,” “TV slut.”
“Today, ‘slut,’ even ‘ho’ — girls use it in a fun way, a positive way,” said Atoosa Rubenstein, the editor in chief of Seventeen magazine, adding that a phrase such as “you little slut” has become a way for girlfriends to bust each other’s chops.
I’ll admit it, I have used the “you little slut” line, along with the head-shake and the faux-disapproving tone. Although, when joking, I usually rely on more joke-y terms, like ho-bag.
The problem, though, is that while the slut-reclaiming may look cute and fun on the surface, it remains a barbed slur, especially for young women. And the cultural messages we send girls continue to be horribly mixed:
“All of our pop icons look like porn stars,” Ms. Rubenstein said. “However they’re all virgins, quote unquote,” she said, referring to Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears. “That’s a very complex message to send to girls.”
For junior high and high school girls, said Leora Tanenbaum, the author of “Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation,” being labeled a slut is still painful and humiliating, despite pop culture’s semi-embrace of the term. Ms. Roxas of Gurl.com said teenagers often inquire about it.
They ask, Ms. Roxas said, questions like: “I’ve acquired the reputation of being a slut, how do I get around it?” or “If I have a boyfriend and I perform a certain action, does that make me a slut?” (Ms. Levy said that even the girl who competed to dress “the skankiest” made it clear that having sex with someone who is not a boyfriend is unacceptable behavior.)
It does give girls an impossible model: They’re supposed to appear sexually provocative, but they aren’t supposed to actually enjoy sex or be sexual subjects. Even the article points this out: it’s more acceptable for women to dance on tables, wear short skirts and flirt, but should she actually be promiscuous (can someone actually define that word for me?) and have sex with someone other than her committed partner, she goes from being play-slut to real-slut — and real-slut is still a no-no.
And while adult women get over the slut-as-an-insult issue (I haven’t heard that word used as an epithet since freshman year of college), we still haven’t gotten past the sexual double standard. And neither have men:
“When I think of the word slut,” wrote Don Reisinger, a student doing accounting and law work in Albany, in an e-mail message, “I think of a woman who has been around the block more times than my dad’s Chevy. I might date a slut, but I certainly wouldn’t marry one.”
How original of you.
For that reason, perhaps, women sometimes feel pressured to downplay their sexual experience. “Women still have a script for their future that involves marriage, that involves children,” said Dr. Susan Freeman, an assistant professor of women’s studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. “It governs a lot of choices they make, how sexually active they can be, what risks they are willing to take in terms of alienating a possible marriage partner.”
There seems to be a mysterious line between being experienced and being a slut, and no one can put a number on it. According to a government report released last year (“Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures”), men age 30 to 44 have had a median of six to eight sexual partners in their lifetimes. The women’s median was about four.
Many women steer clear of the numbers conversation entirely, but as was pointed out several times in interviews, it would be more unusual for them to be virgins.
The fact is, Ms. Levy said, “I think there are a lot of women who want to have a lot of sex because they enjoy it.”
I’ve known women who lie about their “numbers,” or who decide not to sleep with someone simply because they don’t want their numbers to go up. The whole thing is silly. And shaming women out of enjoying sex is a centuries-old trick that needs to die. Soon.