A study in the June issue of Social Psychology Quarterly found that when college women call each other “slut” to demean each other they aren’t referring to sexual promiscuity but “social class” and that girls who actually engaged in less sexual behavior were more likely to be called sluts.
I should say that the study only included 53 subjects at Midwestern University so it’s hard for me to make broad generalizations from the findings. Sociologist researchers, Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura Hamilton, did, however, interview these girls for five whole years.
The 53 women were separated into two groups “affluent” and “less affluent” based on their economic backgrounds. When the “affluent women” called other girls sluts it was because of their perceived class. If another girl didn’t have the right hair, expensive clothing, handbags or look, then she was a “slut.” The “less affluent” group called women sluts when they looked snobby, stuck up or exclusive. The affluent group prioritized social climbing and Greek Life, while the less affluent group was more interested in being “down to Earth” and easy to get along with.
Armstrong told The Atlantic, “We were there on the floor when these dramas would emerge about slut-bashing. We saw working class girls walk out of their dorms to visit boys, and the privileged girls would say, ‘why are you wearing that?’”
The Atlantic reports, “Despite the pervasiveness of slut-shaming, there was no cogent definition of sluttiness, or of girls who were slutty, or even evidence that the supposedly slutty behavior had transpired.”
Although they engaged in more sexual activity than their less affluent peers,the affluent women were the ones who publicly slut-shamed other girls and held everyone to their arbitrary standards of what a slutty girl is or isn’t. The study also found that none of the girls made friends across economic lines.
“The high-status women would literally snub or look through the poorer women. They would blow them off entirely. We spent a lot of time asking who would say hi to who; who would let the door slam in someone’s face,” Armstrong said.
On the “affluent girls” standards, “You looked hot, but not slutty. You looked classy, not trashy. You hooked up just the right amount, but not too much. You engaged in the ‘appropriate’ amount of sexual activity. You selected men who were hot, not men who were jerks, from the right fraternities, not the wrong fraternities. You had to indicate that you were deserving of status. So the women who failed at that were of course the less affluent ones for whom the behavior was not easy, obvious or natural.”
One sorority girl said, “I only see people who are Greek; I don’t know who the other students are. They are like extras.”
This study makes me uncomfortable because it’s perpetuating a horrible stereotype that money equals mean. I am not saying that the findings aren’t true to what occurred, I am just not going to dismiss or make assumptions about anyone based on their parent’s bank account, especially when my college experience was so different. Some people behaved this way, sure, but all different kinds of people were friends. I wonder how much of this behavior is a part of how women generally treat each other or about how the girls at Midwestern University treat each other. Clearly, there are class issues there, the “rich girls” and “poor girls” sound like they hate each other for shallow, perceived reasons.
It saddens me that his kind of behavior still exists. If you want to be in a sorority and behave a certain way that’s cool but don’t make other women feel bad about doing their thing (and vice versa of course). It doesn’t matter if you call a girl a “slut” because you think she’s been with a lot of people or because you think she is beneath you. Either way it’s reusing a sexist term to create dichotomies between what a “good” girl and a “bad” girl is. It’s one thing to take back the word it’s another thing to redefine it to put down women in a different way.
What do you think? In a moment of weakness where you thought or said a girl was a slut were you talking about her social class or appearance and not her sexual behavior? Has anyone treated you differently because of your social class at school?
[Via. Shutterstock/lavitrei /HuffPo/The Atlantic/The Register]
Rich College Girls Call Poor College Girls "Sluts" To Create Social Hierarchies
