On Being a "Slut"

In high school, my friends called me a slut. A couple of them went with "nympho," but mostly it was slut. I have always been very open about being sexual, a little trick I picked up from my mother. She taught my sister and me about sex in our infancy, always told us to use birth control, and occasionally told us more than we wanted to know about her sex with our father. So I talked about sex a lot, and then of course whenever my friends were angry with me out came "slut" like the ending of any conversation.

I struggled with that as a teenager (I say from my advanced age of 20) and I have had and still have trouble integrating the parts of me that are sexual with the parts of me that are intellectual or nurturing. I'm getting better every day, but it's taken some time to bounce back from the stigma and all its consequences that I bore in high school.

That said, I've noticed something very, very different since I've been in college. I still talk about sex all the time. In fact, I have sex all the time and talk all the time about the sex I'm having all the time. I'm crass, I curse, and I am definitely no wilting violet of a girl. I don't hide the fact that I'm a stripper; if someone asks about my job, I'm happy to tell them what it is and answer reasonable questions about it. I run group discussion about sex in the student clubs I'm involved in, and I readily dish out advice and resources when people tell me they're having a sexual problem. Hell, I'm even trying to start a student club completely based around discussion about sex.

So that part hasn't changed. But here, in college, I have completely avoided being branded as a slut. Entirely. I haven't even gotten a single negative reaction from anyone when I've told them I'm a stripper. Those who don't know me well always seem to expect that I'll be delicate and shy when it comes to sex. A frat brother I hooked up with two years ago recently apologized to me for being an asshole because apparently he'd been leading me on and using me for sex. Which, of course, implies that I wasn't leading him on and using him for sex.

And it's not like I go to a liberal college where this would make sense. One girl on my freshman hall earned the moniker "Popcorn Pants P" because she gained a reputation for sleeping around. My friend T, the one who got me into stripping, recently heard about a conversation an entire fraternity had about her. Apparently they were telling stories about how she'd had sex with animals, and mass quantities of group sex, and how she's in porn, etc. She is no more sexual than I am, and even less public about it, and yet she is definitely branded as a campus slut and has trouble finding men (she is heteroflexible) to take her seriously as a romantic partner.

I have not had to deal with any of this. Which is damn confusing. Last night when I was talking to T about her reputation struggles, I started to wonder why. Why would I somehow be exempt from the backlash that being comfortable with my sexuality usually has in our culture and on this campus? I definitely don't mind escaping the issue, but there's something at play here besides just the amount of sex I have and talk about.

I looked at my friend T. I think she is gorgeous, but she is what she calls "curvy." I am a thin girl, just as a consequence of my genes and metabolism. T also has a very fair complexion, and while she is definitely white, she looks very Irish, as though from a newly immigrated family. I am a clearly WASPy woman; I've got pale but unremarkable skin, an average but pretty face, and generally look like an All-American girl next door. T tends to be aggressive in conversation, and is loud. I'm not exactly soft-spoken but I tend to be more manipulative (a lovely trait I've inherited from my mother) than pushy

P, too, was slightly overweight and blonde. She was very pretty and had an hourglass figure. Very Marilyn Monroe. I have auburn hair, and I'm tall and thin. Not "blonde, big tits, your average nightmare."

So......what? I look harmless? This is an issue of how I look? It's an issue of my privilege as a white, anglo-saxon, protestant, thin, accomodating, friendly, woman? Fuck that, it makes me angry. I try to avoid my rich white guilt and use my privilege for good rather than evil, but it's so hard not to get fired up by it. Nobody wants the slut label, nobody wants to be treated like shit that way, but I shouldn't be exempt just because I look like a "nice girl."

Nice girls "don't." I definitely DO. But I never get tickets when I'm pulled over by the cops. I don't even cry, I just look complacent and get a warning. I don't get shit on by the customers at work as much as some of the other girls. I just smile through it. Just because of the way that I look, I am held to different standards of behavior, dress, and even speed than everyone else.

And wow, that's fucked up.