THE LEORA LETTER
Newsletter on Slut-Shaming
Boys will be boys…and girls will be sluts.
June 23, 2021
Photo: Jahsie Ault
“Slut,” “hoe,” and “thot” are slippery and subjective terms
that can apply to any girl or woman, regardless of how they dress or behave. I shed light on slut-shaming—how and why assumptions about being “too” sexual are applied, the consequences for women, and the impact on everyone, regardless of gender.
Dress-Coding: A Common Form of Slut-Shaming
Dress-coding is the act of censuring a girl or woman for being dressed in clothing deemed a “distraction” to other people, especially boys and men. Schools are a hotbed of dress-coding, and Black girls are dress-coded in schools more often than White girls. You can find examples of dress-coding—in and out of schools—in my Instagram project, BeingDressCoded.
Something is seriously wrong when it’s become commonplace to hear about a five-year-old in Minnesota, wearing a sundress, being told by the school nurse to “cover her body,” and a 16-year-old in Nevada who wore a shirt exposing her shoulders, and whose teacher called two police officers to escort her to the school office, where she was forced to sit and miss class.
In Ms. earlier this month, I gave gendered school dress codes an F.
Dress-coding does not disappear as we get older. Last month, USA Today asked me about Jill Biden, 69, and Diane Keaton, 75, being criticized for dressing “inappropriately” for their ages. (Biden had worn patterned tights, and Keaton had worn thigh-high boots. Believe it or not, these choices were criticized around the world.)
Slut-shaming and dress-coding just morph into a different form and intersect with ageism. "When you're younger,” I told reporter Sara Moniuszko, “the pressure is to look sexy, to look hot... As you get older, and you age out of those pressures and expectations, you're still supposed to conform to a very narrow set of rules and guidelines that are never really spelled out.”
“Jill Biden and Diane Keaton should rock their looks, and they should just own it: This is who I am. This is what I decided to put on this morning. This is what I look like. Deal with it.”
Key takeaway: You’re never too young, or too old, to be slut-shamed.
ICYMI
The New Yorker recently gave me a shout-out. I am honored to be cited along with legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.
The “cheugy” label—describing someone who is off-trend or trying too hard—often is playful, but as I said to USA Today, it “can sting most severely for a woman because first we are judged on the basis of our appearance.”
Head Over Heels
As I wrote in
Bad Shoes & The Women Who Love Them, “Choose your shoes wisely; don’t let ill-fitting shoes cut off the circulation of blood to your brain.”
Have you been slut-shamed? Dress-coded? If you want to sort out what happened, or you want to consider publicizing your story to raise awareness, please email me at leora@leoratanenbaum.com. I will reach out to you for further discussion. I will not share your story with anyone without your consent.
For more information on slut-shaming, read I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet.