"Oh my gawd, would you look at what your wan is wearing?" "I heard she rode your man after Carbon the last night"..All together now, "Christ, she's such a slut".
I get it, we all judge someone at one point or another, whether it's because we don't agree with their actions or we're just doing it because it makes us feel better about our own lives. But this week my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been overloaded with 'slut shaming'. Slut shaming, for anyone who is unsure, is basically when people bash a woman/girl for liking sex, having sex with multiple people, or acting in any sexual manner.
It all started last week, when I saw #SlaneGirl trending on Twitter and my Facebook Newsfeed was filled with jokes about this said incident. Now, unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard about the Eminem concert and what happened at it. We've all been there, we've all done things that we probably wouldn't have done if we were sober, this girl was just unfortunate enough to have sick weirdos around her that thought it'd be great craic to take pictures and post them on the internet. In a matter of hours, the pictures went viral, and this girl became subjected to some of the worst abuse I have ever seen on the internet. Now I wrote that last sentence VERY carefully, it was the girl that got all of the abuse. Not the lad who thinks he's a king for getting head, not the f**k heads that took the pictures or the people who shared the picture,told their friends and just added fuel to an already well lit fire. It came out later that this girl was actually under 18, so the camera people can add child pornography to their 'things I did at Slane' list, good job. The point I'm trying to make from this story is that everyone freaked because this girl did something, that had absolutely no effect on their personal lives whatsoever, but they still felt it was their moral duty to express their opinions from their high horses. Would it have been the same if she had been a guy? Hell no, the guy in that picture has barely been mentioned. If anything he's probably been hailed a hero by his friends. "Ah lad, you're such a pimp, all the beures lovin' yeah". No.
Fast forward a week and two incidents ran into each other that really got under my skin. One of my favourite bloggers/vloggers Leanne Woodfull was given abuse over a picture she posted wearing a bra. Most of the abuse was to do with the size of her boobs, which are quite a lovely size. Small boob girls unite! She wrote a tumblr post which I'll link here and it adds a little more to this post. But seriously guys, WHY do you need to comment something like that? Does it really affect your life if her boobs are a certain size? Absolutely not. And another thing you shouldn't even think you're entitled to comment on another person's body shape. I've seen so many bloggers get abuse if they post pictures of underwear, as if it's something to be ashamed of. "Oh no, that's supposed to be worn under clothes, we shouldn't that" "She showed her underwar, she's clearly a slut". Shut up. If nothing nice is going to come out of that gob of yours, zip it. This leads me nicely onto to the VMAs. You all know what I'm talking about. Miley Cyrus. Everyone lost their frickin minds over her performance. She grinded up against bunnies, wore latex and twerked like nobody's business. I actually enjoyed it and I say fair play to her for just doing her. If she's enjoying herself, let her off. But oh no, the internet got up on their horses again, ready to charge into battle. People were calling her a 'bad role model' because she used to be Hanna Montana, when she was 13. Now let's all take a moment, are you the same as you were at 13? I know I'm not. I used to thing Chris Brown was cool when I was 13, teenage innocence we'll call it. I actually remember watching Hanna Montana and I think it's cool to watch a girl who is the same age as me go through all the changes that any girl goes through. Breaking away from her parents, exploring her sexuality and becoming confident in who she is. We all do it. Now I understand, people were shocked, but the way people went about it was disgusting. I began to see pictures of parts of her being posted, comparing it to all sorts. Reverse the situation and if this was about you or someone you cared about, you'd be so hurt. So why is it okay to do it to another person? I'm going to say it right now, if I had a body like Miley Cyrus I'd be rocking up to all sorts of events in latex lingerie. She clearly meant to shock people with her performance, and all I can say is well done Miley.
I guess I'm just trying to understand in this day and age, why we're still so shocked and offended by anything to do with sex, and that our way of dealing with it is often by slut shaming? So what if a girl had consensual sex with more people than you have? So what if I wear a tight dress on a night out, God forbid I'm actually comfortable in my own body. So what if I'm open and honest about my sex life/sexual fantasies. It doesn't make me a bad person and it certainly doesn't invite you to openly abuse me or anyone else for that matter. We shouldn't have to apologise or stop, just because some people still don't live in the 21st century.
This will probably be a bit of a heavy post for some people, but I needed to vent somewhere and I think my friends are starting to get sick of me complaining. If you read this, I'd love your opinions.
Sinead x
