MountainMornings

Slut shaming, it’s nothing new. Long before that Rush ‘to judgement’ Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” on his radio show, young women everywhere have been objectified and marginalized for ages. Think of the adulterous “A”  sewn onto Hester Prynne’s bodice, now think of the “walk of shame” I first heard about when the kids went off to college. If you haven’t heard about it, ask a twenty something. I remember feeling pained even then, we “Our Bodies Ourselves” feminists burned our bras for what?

Now it’s back with a vengeance – the public humiliation of a young woman for embracing her sex. Yes, I’m talking about 20 year old Miley Cyrus, and isn’t everyone else? The Rocker and Cait first filled me in on the controversy between Miley and Sinead O’Connor last weekend. Odd I thought. One rocker who chopped all her hair off and ripped up a picture of the Pope 2 decades ago vs the Wrecking Ball baby. I missed her stellar performance on SNL, but did catch Miley on Ellen this week, doing her best to explain her fascination with her own tongue (turns out she just hates smiling on the red carpet) and her love of wearing onesies, oh and teddy bears. And this morning I read a great new blogger’s take on the whole shebang, http://fishershannon.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/the-s-word/

The problem with the word “slut” is that we don’t have a male equivalent. It’s like the French don’t have a word for “snack.” It’s because they just don’t do it, no fast food, no eating in the car, no walking down the street with coffee in hand. Nope, the French sit down and savor every single morsel of food and drink. Let’s think for a minute, what if we did have a derogatory term for a man who was enjoying his body and didn’t mind having a little sexual fun with it, no regrets. What would it be? Player, no since this is gender neutral. Manwhore, no since the whole whore part is female specific. Sex addict, maybe. Hmmm, a promiscuous man. “A single young man who sleeps readily with a number of women would probably not have any label attached to his behavior.” http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear/201302/certain-aspects-promiscuity

Slut first appeared in the written language in 1402, according to the Oxford English Dictionary , that great repository of language information. At that time, slut meant roughly what one sense of slattern  means today: a slovenly, untidy woman or girl. It also apparently meant “kitchen maid” (”She is a cheerful slut who keeps the pots scrubbed and the fires hot.”). By the end of the 15th century the sense “a woman given to immoral or improper conduct” had come into use, and it is the only meaning in use today. Interestingly,the same second meaning, a promiscuous woman, developed for the term slattern. dictionary.com

So Miley isn’t writing songs about her old boyfriends who we must presume she’d been intimate with a la Taylor Swift. Taylor, who mostly keeps her clothes on is still rather boy crazy. Miley didn’t fade into the woodwork, like Annette our first Mouseketeer. She twerked her way into America’s pop culture, for better or worse, with her mother in the background signing her checks. And taking a selfie with the signature “tongue and wink” move in this AP pic.

My brother Dr Jim, the psychologist, called Ms Miley a master marketing strategist, and I have to agree. So stop feeling sorry for her America, she refuses to be shamed into submission. And let’s drop the word slut from the Oxford English dictionary. After Britney’s brief affair with a boa, and Madonna’s many semi-nudist and full frontal nudist concerts and picture books, and Cher, and Lady Gaga, Miley romping around in a teddy bear outfit that covered her like a one piece bathing suit with a foam finger is pretty tame, or lame, depending on your point of view. Let’s get off our puritanical white horse…and wink back.