It has been heard, done, and seen before. Every person has guaranteed at some point in their life to have seen a girl walk down the street in a pair of shorts or a low-cut top and think about how much of a “slut” she was. It even has been known to get to the point where one doesn’t even think with the negative connotation behind it. Someone dresses in a way that exposes even the slightest bit of skin and then suddenly, they’re marked with the brand: slut. Even if they have absolutely nothing to deserve such a title.

That’s what I think is interesting: the fact that women are essentially walking on eggshells to impress the society in which they live. Rarely is there a time where a woman isn’t critiqued for how she dresses, how she acts, who she has sex with, what she chooses to do with her life. It’s almost like a game that 50 percent of the population is forced to play.

According to most societal standards, a “good” woman is one who dresses modestly, who doesn’t have copious amounts of sex, who’s loud, but not too loud, or she might scare off a man. If this sounds like something one would see in a Jane Austen novel, then, congratulations, dear reader, you are not a part of the problem that plagues us today.

Alexis Fruling, a Canadian woman, recently had a threesome she had with her friends go viral without her nor her friends' consent. While having sex in public is not exactly the wisest path to take, what is an interesting concept is that comments ranged from being proud that she was owning up to her “mistake” to the typical concept that she was a “dumb slut.” They seemed to only target her, though. Not her male friends. Why? It was almost like the world deemed it okay for men to participate in such activities, but the instant a woman chooses to participate in anything even remotely explicit, she is the only one to be shamed.

It’s to the point that if a woman is assaulted, the media is quick to twist it around and say that it was what the woman was wearing. That the woman is a whore because of something that was done to her. As in the case of Steubenville, where a girl was drunk and raped by men and ended up being called a slut. Where media turned it around and made it seem like this whore was ruining the lives of such promising young athletes.

People may say that slut-shaming doesn’t exist, but it’s there. It’s a huge part of modern society that needs to desperately be changed because a 16 year old in a tank top shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not she’s distracting the males around her. Because a woman should be able to walk outside and not worry about being attacked because at that moment she chose to wear shorts. A survivor of rape or assault should not have to worry about whether or not her peers will brand her a whore for something that wasn’t even her fault. It’s an epidemic that one day will end. Sure, we’re on the right track, but I definitely feel that we’re a long ways away from having female sexuality become a societal norm.