None of Your Business

1 Nov

In the time that I’ve had this blog, I have gotten less and less personal with my posts. This has been a conscious decision, as I like to keep my personal life relatively quiet. I don’t like to talk about who I’m dating, and I don’t like to talk about private matters. But this has been bothering me, and I’m trapped in my apartment because of Hurricane Sandy, and I’m bored, and I want to write about something. So this will do.

Saturday night, I went out on Halloween as an M&M. I know a lot of girls my age subscribe to the idea that Halloween is a time to wear a skimpy outfit. This sort of thing makes me wildly uncomfortable, so I opted for the green M&M look. I still wanted to look nice, so I wore bright green and black stockings and high heels. Under my costume, I had on short shorts and a tank top. I planned on coming home that night.

My costume was a complete success. Lots of compliments, lots of laughs. Around 1AM, the prospect of going back to Queens did not appeal to me. The guy I’ve been seeing lives much closer. So we arranged to meet up. We got pizza and went back to his place where I spent the night.

The next morning, we went across the street to grab bagels and coffee. I hadn’t planned on spending the night away from home. So I ended up wearing the tank top, short shorts, my heels, and his flannel shirt to the bagel shop. I felt a bit silly, and my legs were rather cold. But there was not much else to be done.

The line at the bagel shop was loooong, and he was anxious to get back in time to watch the Jets game. I told him to run across the street to the grocery store to buy coffee grounds, and I would hold our place in line and order for him if the line moved fast. He smiled, kissed me, and ran across the street. While standing in line, I noticed a couple of girls my age in line behind me. They looked at my bare legs and the cute boy that was running across the street and snickered. I told myself I was paranoid.

But I could definitely hear them whispering. And as my ears perked up, I realized that they were definitely talking about me. And I most definitely heard the uttering of the word, “slut.”

Man, did that sting. There are few words in the English language that can make a girl feel as worthless and low as that one. I tend to dress conservatively, and it’s not a word I’ve been called often in my life. But hearing it felt like a shot to the gut.

My first reaction was to brush it off. Who were these girls to judge me? They were in sweatpants and Uggs, and I had great legs and a cute boy who was going to come back my way. I also justified to myself that I really wasn’t doing anything wrong. These girls were unfairly judging me. I’ve been dating him for months. I really like him. It’s the day after Halloween, and I didn’t have anything else to wear.

But then I had the most important thought of all. NONE OF THAT SHOULD MATTER. The fact that they felt high and mighty enough to call me a slut is unacceptable. They don’t know my situation, and they shouldn’t have to. I absolutely hate that we live in a world where women are so vilified with this double standard. Boys will be boys, but girls carry the Madonna/Whore complex around with them everywhere. One of the biggest lies people in our culture believe is that women have achieved equality. We haven’t. Please, let’s all stop kidding ourselves with this.

And the worst part of this to me is that other girls were calling me this. I thought of Tina Fey’s speech in Mean Girls

Calling each other sluts and whores just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores

And that’s really the problem. It isn’t necessarily men holding women back from equality, we’re holding each other back. Every time we pick on each other for our appearance, for looking fat, for dressing scantily, we’re damning ourselves.

All I’m saying is that I want to live in a world where women don’t have to claw at each other because they feel as though they need to compete for men, social status, jobs, anything. It’s horrible. Maybe I’ve been watching a lot of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” the last couple of days, but I’d really like it if women saw other women dressed scantily and say something along the lines of “Damn, she looks fierce!” And that same woman could feel secure and proud to walk down the street, wearing what she wants to wear, without fearing the condemnation of those around her.

I don’t know why those girls felt the need to call me a slut, and I just wish it wasn’t something I heard. Can we all just not use that word anymore? Can we all just agree that it does nothing but hold us ladies down? Wear what you want to wear. Sleep with whomever you want to sleep with or don’t. And as Salt ‘N Peppa say, “Don’t keep sweatin’ what I do, cause I’m gonna be just fine.”