This past weekend, my roommates and I went to the bars to enjoy ourselves after a difficult week.
While out, four different men approached me and asked for my number.
The next day, my roommates and I were socializing with a group of our closest guy friends.
We recapped our fun night out and laughed about how many men approached me. One of our male friends asked if I gave all the men my phone number.
“Well, none of them seemed creepy,” I said. “I did give them all my number.”
“Slut,” one of our male friends said to me while laughing.
He followed the remark by asking what clothing I wore out that night.
This form of slut-shaming holds many false assumptions about a girl and makes the double standard between men and women so clear.
It happens too often and needs to stop.
This type of slut-shaming assumes the woman sought out the men first or dressed in a provocative way to draw the men’s attention.
When this happens, a stigma is placed on a woman for receiving so much attention from men. Even if this assumption were to be true, there should be nothing wrong with a woman approaching men first.
While out with friends or walking to class, I overhear many conversations between men talking about how many girls they had sex with in the past week.
The other men in the conversation usually praise the guy for sleeping with more than one or two women in a ?short period of time.
However, if a girl simply gives her number out to multiple men without seeking them out first and without sleeping with them, she is ?accused of being a slut. There are many reasons why this slut-shaming continues to take place today. One key factor in ?slut-shaming is media.
On many television shows for young adults, it can be noted that men are shown to be “playing the field” by dating or having a sexual relationship with many women.
The men in these shows are often rewarded for it.
However, many women in popular television shows are shown in monogamous relationships the majority of the time.
These two representations create a stigma on girls who date or have sexual relationships with multiple men, while it idolizes men for ?doing the same thing.
Slut-shaming is also reinforced in conversations among celebrities.
One example of this is how Taylor Swift was made fun of at the 2013 Golden Globes for dating many men. Swift never dated more than one man at a time, but was still criticized for it.
However, in December 2014, Leonardo DiCaprio was witnessed leaving a nightclub in Miami with 20 women at once. The situation was laughed at and DiCaprio drew praise for doing this.
If we want slut-shaming to stop, we need to stop displaying it in mass media, which has a large influence on our social views.
eshrack@indiana.edu
