Slut In Victorian Era

In today’s society woman are beaten and brutalized with words on a daily basis. Women in the twenty-first century still get judged and disrespected more than the average man. Since I was thirteen, I have been told “You’re a slut” or “You are asking for boy’s attention” or “Save some for the imagination, sweetheart”. Now that I am older it has gotten a lot worse and more derogatory. The word “slut” didn’t always stand for someone that wears a shorter shorts or shows a little more cleavage than the average women, it used to stand for a woman that had a lot of casual sexual partners. In pop culture we have blown this up by making the average woman feel self-conscious about wearing a casual summer dress because she is scared she is going to get

verbally attacked or she is asking to be raped.
While the word has not drastically been changed over the centuries the usage has become more common over the years.

During the Victorian era the word “slut” meant that a woman had a lot of casual sex around the town. Heidi Stevens explains how sluts were perceived in the Victorian era, “"The only contrast that existed was a fallen woman — a slut," Bronstein says. "You were bawdy and loved sex and you had no credibility. You were the lowest sort of citizen."” (Stevens). As time went on the word slut started being used in schools around the 1990’s. Young women would get their reputation ruined in the 1990’s if they were considered a “slut”. These young women usually will forever label themselves as a “slut” or someone who isn’t “good enough” for a serious relationship. Nowadays if a woman gets labeled as a slut she is considered one out of thousands but back in the 1990’s there were only a handful that were singled out. “What’s different today is that we still have slut-bashing, but in the 1990s and previous to that, every middle school and high school had one to two girls singled out and labeled a slut. Now, in 2015, the word is everywhere. Almost every girl has had the experience of being labeled a “slut.” I have yet to meet a girl under the age of 25 who has not been called a “slut.”” (Steinkeller). Over time the demographic has expanded greatly. Looking at the history of the word “slut” the word has gone to a specific group of women who were sleeping with a lot of

different men to young women that dress a little more provocative than others.
Pop culture has affected the word “slut” through music and media for years. When listening to music nowadays all I hear is songs about sex and drugs. Within these songs about sex they make the woman seem like a sex object. When watching the music videos to these songs what comes to my mind is “Wow she is wearing slutty clothes” or “She just asking for it” as a woman to say these things it makes me realize what media has shaped in my head about other woman. Looking at magazines in the local grocery store line I always see women on the cover with very little to no clothing on. While our society teaches us from a young age that it is okay for celebrities to be sex objects we grow up thinking it’s okay for us to wear a little more promiscuous clothing because that’s what we see on young women in the media. The problem is that when normal young women do this we get judged and broken down verbally because we aren’t famous and on a magazine.
In the twenty first century slut shaming has become very prominent.

From parents telling their children to go back into their rooms to change because they’re “not leaving enough to the imagination” to rapist saying “well she was asking for it”. A woman’s clothing should never define who she is. Slut has become so commonly used that we throw it out of our mouths like it doesn’t hurt others or makes others feel very self-conscious. In today’s society very few women have gone their whole life without being called a “slut”, “whore”, “skank” or “hoe”. Most of the time in society we use these derogatory words to describe a woman’s appearance or attitude. For example, I have been told that I am a “slut” for wearing athletic shorts and a tank top while working out. With the word meaning a woman sleeps around a lot with multiple different guys how does this imply to my outfit? Looking into a rape cases there is always one person that believes that the survivor was “asking for it”. Keli Goff explains what happened to an eleven-year-old girl in her state “This became crystal clear to me upon reading coverage of the rape of an 11-year-old girl in my home state of Texas. In a New York Times article on the story, we hear from outraged community members who seem both appalled and embarrassed by the ordeal. Not so much by the fact that an 11-year-old girl was raped and that they live among a group of young men who could do such a thing, but appalled by the fact that she dressed

provocatively and that these young men could have their lives ruined by the fallout.” (Goff) In society we blame a young eleven-year-old for her rape because she was somehow dressed “provocatively”. Our society judges’ young girls to woman everyday based on how we dress and act without knowing a thing about our sexually life we get called “sluts” and “whores”.
A simple word like “slut” can make someone feel so self-conscious and vulnerable in a matter of seconds. Society has made this word more than just a woman that has a lot of casual sex. The word has been blown up into someone who simply wears short athletic shorts and she is “asking to be raped”. The word “slut” went from such a small demographic to thousands of women getting called this on a daily basis. It would be a simpler world if it was easy for a woman to leave her house in shorts or a dress without being worried she is going to be cat called or judged or even raped.