Bring Back Slut Shaming

Any time I venture into public, I’m increasingly convinced more people should have been bullied as kids (of the swirlie variety, not the “I wish you were dead” kind). Behind every ill-adjusted adult who thinks “ask me about my pronouns” buttons are rad or that perpetually living in his mom’s basement is normal is a dork who didn’t get shoved into enough lockers for weird behavior.

Public shaming would go a long way in phasing out all kinds of social ills. People should be made to feel stupid for masking outdoors or chomping popcorn with their mouths open during quiet movie scenes (or loud ones). You should feel the weight of a thousand disapproving eyeballs when you take your shoes off on an airplane or go to the grocery store in buffalo-plaid pajama bottoms and Crocs.

But it’s not just things people do wear that deserve scorn. It’s also things they don’t. It’s time to bring back slut shaming.

Before the feminists freak, I’m not talking about menacing strippers or blaming rape victims, so take a cleansing breath. I’m talking about normalizing the societal discouragement of looking like a hoe at work, at play, and online.

We’ve all seen it: a boob threatening to launch out of athleisure wear or a pair of asscheeks popping out of some daisy dukes to bid passersby g’day. There’s no such thing as underwear anymore because anything can be outerwear. Rachel Green’s mortifying nightie looks downright puritanical next to the average Instagram post and workout OOTD.

As one X user, Megha, rightly observed, hoes “think they can just go wherever and sexually assault our eyes with zero consequences.” Bingo — and not just our eyes but the eyes of our husbands, dads, and kids. So let’s introduce them to some social consequences, shall we?

Here’s how Megha handled one slutty yogi in her apartment’s shared courtyard:

(Catch me yelling, “Hoes can no longer be permitted to have a chokehold on society,” the next time I’m a few margaritas deep on a Taco Tuesday.)

But she’s right, and it happens everywhere. At the gym? Cake face walks in wearing booty shorts and risking a nip slip with each rep. Out to lunch? Pay no attention to the hussy in a miniskirt picking up the fork she dropped. Inauguration? Somebody’s got her ta-tas out because being ogled by just the billionaire she’s engaged to isn’t enough.

There’s a clear Christian case for decency in how men and women dress, but lest you think our societal need for slut shaming is driven by “purity culture” prudes, jealous ladies, or misogynist men, it isn’t. Modest may or may not be hottest, but that’s not the issue. When women perpetually give away the goods under the guise of “empowerment,” they give away the real sexual power of women everywhere — and make no mistake, women have sexual power men just don’t. Thanks to unlimited supply, value is in freefall.

In 2018, Camille Paglia called it a “flesh parade,” writing, “The current surplus of exposed flesh in the public realm has led to a devaluation of women and, paradoxically, to sexual ennui.”

In other words, men are bored. Thanks to all the “ass, titties, ass, titties, ass, titties” every time they open social media or walk outside, guys like @gotsnacks_ are “not excited no more. I’m bootied out. Y’all have showed me so much ass, I’m numb to it.”

My colleague Madeline Osburn wrote about this phenomenon four years ago, noting that “the devaluation of women’s bodies hurts women too.” She said:

Before we were all “bootied out,” a woman’s sexuality was not just mysterious and proactive, but the most powerful force on the planet. It drove men to face great risks, cross oceans, write ballads, and even start wars just for the chance to gaze at a woman’s booty. Women held all the cards in intimate relationships.

Not anymore. As long as the hoes have “a chokehold on society,” they’ve tipped ladies’ hands.

For societal slut shaming to work, we need to know who and what it’s for. It’s not to shame women for being sexy. Hello, that’s kind of a biological hazard. It’s also not to meet one act of inappropriateness with another. A young lady who shows up to church in a crop top shouldn’t leave believing her shirt length matters more than her soul. Rather, it’s to help reestablish the good societal expectation that while women are sexy, we’re not sex objects. And we should be expected to act accordingly.

So, in the words of every airport everywhere, if you see something, say something. Maybe that means shouting across your apartment courtyard like Megha, or maybe it just means communicating with a look. Maybe we can pressure social media sites to expand their definition of obscene content and states to get more serious about enforcing indecent exposure laws. It’s about time “no shirt, no shoes, no service” policies also banned Meredith Palmer-esque “shirts” in their fine print.

For all their angry shrieking about misogyny, feminists are the ones who forfeited women’s true sexual power — but we can restore it. Not by covering every square inch of skin. We’re looking for less “Return to Amish” and more rediscovery of feminine allure. To make boobs and booties great again, flatter those features rather than flaunting or flattening them. Play to those curves without baring or androgenizing them. Show a bit of skin but not most of it, just a little something-something to keep ’em guessing. When hoes leave nothing to the imagination, they take what was once intriguing and make it boring instead. We can’t let them get away with it anymore.

“If women want respect in society, they must do their part to raise their own value,” Paglia wrote. “Stop throwing it away on empty display.”

Maybe not all women want respect, but some of us still do. So we’ll do our part to raise our value. Let the slut shaming commence.

Kylee Griswold is the managing editor of The Federalist and a contributor to IW Features. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in communication arts/speech and an A.S. in criminal justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.