By Kaitlin Menza
When two clothing brands released graphic tees this summer with cheeky allusions to how many ex-boyfriends Taylor Swift has, they couldn't have known the amount of controversy they were about to cause. Fans pounced, claiming the companies were implying that Taylor is a slut. "She's young and should be able to fall in love as many times as she wants without judgment," asserts name-twin Taylor, 17.
The outcry is a reminder that slut shaming—the act of making a girl feel embarrassed for her sexuality, whether she's sexually active or not—is still as much a force in 2013 as it was years ago. It can take the form of direct name calling, as it often did in the whopping 306,000 tweets per minute about Miley Cyrus's performance at this year's MTV Video Music Awards, or it can take a more indirect approach, influencing the things girls do (or don't do) simply because they're afraid of being seen as a slut.
And it's not just a few who are affected. "By the time a girl has graduated from college, she will have experienced slut shaming," says Leora Tanenbaum, author of "Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation." As with all forms of bullying, social media has made it easier—and more widespread. Now intimate photos and texts meant for one person can be screen-grabbed and shared with friends; rumors about hookups can spread around a school in minutes. "The Internet greases the wheels of this phenomenon," Tanenbaum says. "Reputation is more slippery than ever."
Calling someone a slut is more than just mean; it can have truly dire consequences. Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17-year-old from Canada, committed suicide this year after she told her mom she was raped by a group of boys (who have not been charged for the alleged assault) and classmates called her a slut because of it. Audrie Pott, a 15-year-old from California, killed herself in 2012 after she was allegedly sexually assaulted by three boys at a party and at least one photo from that night was circulated and gawked at by her classmates. It's gut-wrenching to think that what seemingly pushed these teens over the edge wasn't the attacks themselves but rather the implication, by their peers, that somehow they wanted or deserved them.
Girls have been the victims of the trend, and girls have sometimes even been the perpetrators, but now girls are leading the charge to stop slut shaming for good. At the recent New York International Fringe Festival, a group of all-female high schoolers made waves with an original production called Slut. The play tells a story similar to Audrie's and Rehtaeh's: A girl gets drunk while pregaming and is assaulted by classmates on her way to a party, but even her friends don't believe she was attacked. Most of her community agrees that she was a slutty girl who probably wanted to hook up anyway. "The word was coming up constantly, so we decided to focus on it and the complexity of slut shaming," says the play's codirector, Meg McInerney, also a cofounder of The Arts Effect NYC, which produced the show. "A number of the girls we talked to revealed that they had been victims of sexual assault themselves and were slut shamed for it," adds codirector, writer, and Arts Effect cofounder Katie Cappiello. Amari Rose Leigh, 15, was an actress in the play, but she's not leaving her influence at the stage. She's started a club called Feminist Future in order to continue having conversations about the issues girls face. "Some teens don't even realize they can talk about this stuff, so I wanted to bring it to my school," she says.
At colleges nationwide, where the National Institute of Justice extrapolates that about one in five girls will be a victim of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault before graduating, students are assembling to bring attention to the mishandling of these cases on campus. Young women at Occidental College and the University of North Carolina, among many other schools, have filed complaints against their universities because of alleged negligence in pursuing the truth and, in some instances, for slut shaming tactics that seek to sweep assaults under the rug. Through her own complaints after reporting that she had been raped, Swarthmore College junior Mia Ferguson, 19, has worked to make her school more effective in its investigations of misconduct. "The thing that was more frustrating than the sexual violation was the betrayal by my institution," she says of her experience. So Mia took things into her own hands: Through Facebook, she connected with students from other schools who were confronting their administrations. "Social media has blown my mind," she says. "It's given us the tools we need to rally, and through it, colleges and universities are hearing us."
While bullying is easier than ever before, so is activism. You can follow an organization's Twitter feed, sign a petition on change.org, or find like-minded girls on Facebook. "I see so many more young feminists than I did 15 years ago," says Jessica Valenti, author of "He's a Stud, She's a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know." "There's more action and outrage now than in the past."
But the best way to stop slut shaming is the simplest. "Don't use the word . Not even as a joke, not even in a friendly way," Tanenbaum advises. That means no insulting other girls and no using slut as a term of endearment in your group of friends—and it means calling out other people when they use it. "We need to get rid of the word altogether," Amari says. "It's time to take control of our sexuality and not let other people make us ashamed of it."
--
More stories from Teen Vogue:
- 10 Quick and Easy Hairstyles
- The Best Dressed College Students Across the Country
- Star Power! We Look to Hollywood for Fall Hair Color Inspiration
- Pretty Please! Fall's 100 Cutest Dresses
- 10 Quick Ways to Pump Up Your Ponytail
- Top 5 Makeup Mistakes and How to Fix Them
- Say Hello to the Flat Shoes You Need for Fall…All 88 of Them!