This picture,
and variations thereof, has been making it’s way around the internet recently
and it is really starting to tick me off.
It is a prime
example of slut shaming. It isn’t a
joke.
Let’s
look at the photo. Why is she a slut
exactly? Because she is wearing heavy
makeup and a low cut top? She is wearing
makeup because it makes her happy and because she likes the way it looks. An extra flick of eyeliner or another layer
of mascara do not say anything about how she chooses to behave and how many
people she has slept with.
The
girl in the picture also has large breasts.
Whether she chooses to wear a polo neck or a round neck top, this does
not make any difference to the size of her breasts. She has the right to wear what she wants
without being labelled a whore.
I
have personal experience of this. Having
large breasts myself I can confirm that no matter what type of clothing I am
wearing, they always seem to come up in conversation which, whilst frankly bored
by it, I am used to. However, when I
have worn something that shows a bit of cleavage I have, on many more times
that I can count, been judged as “easy”, a whore, or have had my breasts grabbed
at because I look “like that sort of girl”.
What
has scared me more than being grabbed at was not the actual grabbing, it was
the reaction of the assailant (yes, assailant is the right word) and of those
around us of shock when I have dared to complain. The fact that I have large breasts does not
give anyway a free pass to touch me. It
is sexual assault.
The
picture is being passed around as a joke but I what I say that it is preserving
the idea that women can be judged according to how they look and what they wear
and then treated accordingly.
Laughing
at a picture of woman being called a whore is one step on the ladder to the frame
of mind that says that she deserves to be/have been raped because of the way
she looks or dresses.
In
any case, whether a woman is a virgin or has slept with 50 men (what exact
number crosses the appropriate line anyhow?) it is not your business. If you want to judge someone then please, do
it silently and to yourself.
Unless
we stand up and say that these things are offensive they are going to continue. So I am standing up and shouting back.
Enough.
