To cover my bases, I don’t condone the use of the word ‘slut,’ but it’s rather necessary for this piece. I also use heteronormative examples, but obviously this is not exclusive to straight women. Disclaimers...political correctness...yada yada yada.
The Google definition of a slut is “a woman who has many casual sexual partners,” which is fine, and I don’t see a problem with it. The negative connotation is of course where the problems lay. For the purposes of this article, ‘slut’ will be the derogatory version- a female who has a lot of sex with a lot of people and it’s looked down upon.
Everyone knows the person I’m about to describe. It might even be you. It’s the girl who constantly has a sexual partner lined up, be it the guy from the frat, the group project partner, or the Tinder bae.
She is a huge advocate of girls’ nights, always looks hot when she goes out, and is a Snapchat or Instagram Queen. She’s great at being a woman, and part of her persona is whom she is sleeping with.
When you talk to her about the guy of the week, she tells you without hesitation, and sometimes (unfortunately) gives you all the details of the encounter. Some of the guys last over a longer period of time, but you would be shocked if anything came of the relationship beyond drinks and sex. She totally embraces what she is doing, and as far as you can tell, is in complete control of the who/what/when/where of her relations. She is, by definition, a slut.
This girl that I described is self-confident. She rocks her interviews, is easy to talk to, and, as you can probably tell by the aforementioned Snapchat and Instagram, she loves how she looks.
There’s another part of the word ‘slut’ that we need to discuss. That’s the part that says that women who sleep around are insecure, needy, out of control, or crazy.
This begs the question: Can you be a slut AND self-confident?
Some may say it’s a contradiction to be both: these are the people who believe that the reason the woman is having so much sex is to boost her self-confidence, so she can’t start as self-confident. She wouldn’t need to sleep around so much if she were confident enough to be independent, believed she was wanted, or loved herself. Unfortunately, many of the people who hold this belief also picket Planned Parenthood.
I understand that view, and I think it is valid in some cases. Sometimes, I wonder if these highly-sexual women are truly happy with themselves, or if they quickly jump in the shower and wash off the most recent man, only holding on to the flattering comments he made to her prior to getting in bed.
We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that there are women with low self-esteem who turn to others to increase it. I’m not going to comment on how I feel about that, but I definitely don’t think that should be the assumption.
We need to stop assuming that a so-called slut is insecure. Wouldn’t the guy be the insecure one, if he were sleeping with a known slut? There’s a million biological and psychological reasons for someone to want to have sex, and I bet that a large number of those have nothing to do with insecurity and everything to do with wanting to have sex. And maybe liking the person you’re doing it with.
The moral of the story is, we shouldn’t care why a woman is sleeping with as many men as she is, as long as the relations are safe, both parties are consenting adults, and she doesn’t hate herself in the morning. We have to stop judging each other- especially woman to woman- for doing what makes us personally happy. We can take matters into our own hands and completely own the situation. We can hold strong to our beliefs and to ourselves and still let other people into our life. So, can you be a slut and self-confident? I vote yes.
