The Good, The Bad and The Slutty.

"La femme n'est victime d'aucune mystérieuse fatalité : il ne faut pas conclure que ses ovaires la condamnent à vivre éternellement à genoux."
 Simone de Beauvoir

The label ‘slut’ is tossed around rather haphazardly and far too often these days, in my opinion. And, in the majority of contexts, it is used as a pejorative. The dictionary itself regards it as such: 

slut [slʌt]

n

1. a dirty slatternly woman

2. an immoral woman

(Note: 'immoral'! It doesn't get much more outdated than that.)

Recently, one of my boyfriend’s friends was considering asking a girl out on a date, though he couldn’t quite make up his mind. His reasoning behind this indecision? She has a ‘reputation’, and he feared he would be laughed at for dating her. We females, however, it must be added, are subject to doing the exact same thing. If we discover a man has slept with an indeterminate amount of women, we immediately become much more wary, given his newly-verified status as a ‘player’. Here, we must once again note the vast divide between the two sexes: men won’t date ‘sluts’ for fear of being mocked; women won’t date ‘players’ for fear of heartbreak. 

Now, I may sound brassy and insolent with this next remark, but my question this week is as follows: who the fuck actually cares?! When did the quantity of someone’s previous sexual partners suddenly take centre stage when it comes to assessing their character? Whatever happened to personality, or sense of humour? And most importantly of all, when did we all become so fucking shallow?

Admittedly, no-strings-attached sex isn’t for everyone. Some women are downright useless at it. You are the women who drunkenly stumble into bed with a man, attempt to snuggle up afterwards, leave your number on a post-it note on his pillow (signed with a lipstick kiss) for when he wakes up, and then spend the next evening sobbing relentlessly into a cheap bottle of Chardonnay because he hasn’t yet added you on Facebook.

On the other hand, some of you are one-night stand pros. The ‘walk of shame’ does not exist in your world. Instead, you choose to stride home with pride, regardless of the fact that you’re only wearing one false eyelash and have left your bra behind.

Indeed, there is nothing wrong with not being a casual sex expert. It's really all about getting yourself into the right mindset. If you feel him starting to worm his way into anything other than your vagina, leave immediately and don't look back. To those of you who have this sussed (the so-called 'sluts' of the world) I salute you! You are fun, you experiment, you are audacious, you are confident, you challenge gender stereotypes and, let's face it, you come out of it with some very entertaining anecdotes. Myself, for example:

Christmas Eve, 2010, in the pub. The last thing I remember is someone slamming two large glasses of wine and a shot of Sambuca down in front of me. After that, I have some feeble recollections of attempting to give a blow job, but failing miserably as I had utterly forgotten the technique. At some stage I think we had sex… Maybe… I had clearly forced him to set an alarm, as I was rudely awoken at 9am on the dot by an incredibly irritating polyphonic version of the Nokia tune. A quick getaway was necessary, I decided, as I’d promised my Mum that I’d be home for Christmas. However, in the immense confusion that had been the night before, I had forgotten how I had come to be in his bedroom. So, too drunk to be socially acceptable, with mascara all down my face and half of my hair extensions hanging out on one side, I continued down the stairs… Little did I know that, at the bottom, sat his Mum, his Dad and his 6 year old little brother, merrily opening presents under the Christmas tree! I proceeded to introduce myself (!), wish a far too enthusiastic ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ONE AND ALL!!’, before finally cascading wildly out of the front door.

But I digress. My point is this: does telling foolish stories like this about my sexual history render me a ‘slut’? Because, trust me, I’ve got so many more where that came from. Surely, what is more important is that I am able to recount this to you, my dear readers. I am neither humiliated nor ashamed by this experience, nor did I leave his house feeling dirty or cheap. I also managed to remember my pants (having probably not taken them off in the first place.)

My conclusion therefore is this: if you are choosing to shag everything with a pulse in a futile attempt  to increase your already diminished self-esteem then stop immediately, because this is where the problems start. Casual sex can never be the cure. There are many much more simple solutions (join a gym, eat more vegetables etc). However, if you are confident within yourself and happy with what you are doing, then fuck the dictionary definition, fuck the word 'slut' and, instead, go forth and fuck whoever the hell you want. In addition, maybe we should pay less attention to how many people we’ve slept with, and instead concentrate more on actually using protection during the act itself. Get your condoms on, lads. After all, nothing says ‘not tonight, love’ quite like a potentially large and deadly bout of syphilis. 

* All pictures featured on this blog post come from this website: http://motleynews.net/2012/04/23/war-o-women-powerful-messages-written-on-womens-bodies/  Take a look, it's some pretty powerful stuff.
** I have finally succeeded in getting a 'followers' button! (It took long enough.) So if you would like to keep up to date with this fantastic blog, do feel free to follow me =) As per usual, any comments and suggestions about the blog, or any questions for me are more than welcome.

Paris x