I know why I slut-shame and I’m going to stop it
When Emily Ratajkowski got arrested for protesting against Brett Kavanaugh’s election to the Supreme Court last weekend, we didn’t stop to discuss the fact that this moment was an act of increasingly desperate defiance from an unhappy female America fighting the nature of American justice. Nope. We talked about nipples.
Social media exploded in comments on how she wasn’t wearing a bra. Both women and men barricaded the moral fortresses and shouted that her (as one woman said) ‘‘f me clothes’’ were promoting toxic feminism, disrespecting women and triggering a fall of the respectable, moral fabric of society, blah, blah. Because naturally the horsemen of the moral apocalypse are summoned by freewheeling nipple hairs.
Before we even make a start on the slut-shaming part of this, I’d just like to point out that not wearing a bra in public is not inherently a provocative statement. It can be. But it’s often not an attempt to symbolise your shag-a-bility. For me it’s often because I’m hungover and can’t handle anything with more fastenings than a poncho.
And as Amy Schumer, who was also bra-less and also arrested alongside Ratajkowski, said, ‘‘in the ‘what to wear when being detained for four hours on an 87-degree day after a two-hour march’ handbook, bras aren’t recommended’’; aka it’s hot. Ninety per cent of women have gone bra-free at some point, simply because it’s just too sticky and uncomfortable.
But even if we leave that aside, the most infuriating and interesting part of the debacle is that once again we see women piling on to slutshame other women. Which is ironic, right? It’s like when migrants are xenophobic. It’s crazy because most women have been slut-shamed at least once. They know the sense of humiliation, guilt and frustration, but turn around and shunt that shame on to another woman anyway.
So why do we do it? Because women are in fact very, very good at slut-shaming other women. Especially in person and out loud. I’ve been slutshamed on the street frequently, and it’s normally from women. It’s happened when I’ve worn everything from a maxi dress to ripped jeans to a Hello Kitty tracksuit. That one was a total surprise — those trackies were about as erotic as a pair of Birkenstocks and yellow toenails.
Slut-shaming doesn’t just come from disapproving of someone’s outfit. (You can do that silently.) No, slut-shaming involves both disapproving and then actually spitting out rude comments. So to say it out loud you’ve got to be sufficiently insecure, angry with life in general, or arrogant enough to think that your view of what is ‘acceptable’ is more valid than theirs – and they need to know it.
It’s the insecurity one that fascinates me, because I think that’s what is behind the excess of female slut-shamers. Yes, there’s always going to be perhaps 25 per cent of people across both genders who are just angry people looking for any opportunity to vent. And I’d also say there’s a fairly even distribution of supercilious, conservative men and women who think that any person who steps beyond what they see as ‘respectability’ needs to be publicly put down.
So it’s the insecurity one that’s fascinating. Not only because it is the one that we can change but it’s also probably the most common. I know because I’ve done it myself. I’ve caught myself out clubbing, judging passing girls and commenting to my friends on whose outfit is the skankiest. I’ve never shouted it at them, but I’ve made enough snotty comments to my friends to be disgusted with myself the next day.
It’s always because I’m just being thoughtlessly bitchy. I’ve seen someone hotter, younger, bolder, and I fall back to doing what women are told to do since kindergarten. You lash out at women who intimidate you. We get threatened, we feel vulnerable, and before we can stop to breathe we’re banging on about thigh gaps like we’re Anna Wintour sulking sourly on the side of life’s catwalk.
And yes, it’s easy to do because culturally women’s bodies are generally up for casual critique in a level of insane detail that men’s just aren’t. When it comes to ordinary male passers-by we may comment that he’s kinda short, but we’re not going to launch into an appraisal of his nails, his eyebrows and his nose pores.
But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s OK. It just means we’re dealing with our insecurity in a lazy and awful way. So now, as part of my duty as a Caring Responsible Grown-ass Adult Woman, I have to force myself to stop and say, ‘‘Your hot pants make me feel like my butt is made from jelly, but I admire your fearlessness for wearing them!’’
It’s hard, but if we ever want a world where men respect women’s bodies we need to do so too.