Why slut-shaming is ruining your sex life!
So it looks like KStew and RPatz are back together. Huge sigh of relief. Order has been restored in the sleepy hamlet of Hollywood.
As an 11 year old friend of mine says, "sometimes people in movies fall in love." True. And sometimes, people in movies have a hard time in their relationships. Sometimes people in movies put on their matching Chinese cashmere Snuggies, sit in their Spanish Revival style living room, underneath an original collection of Hiroshi Sugimoto photographs, and have a come to jesus conversation about the state of their union.
So Snow White had a not so snow white moment.
Why can't we leave it at that and admire K-Rob for their capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation? Kristen is being slammed in the media for (gasp) having cheated on her boyfriend. A 22 year old cheating on her boyfriend? What a way to devastate the nation.
If I had a nickel for every time someone in the media, blogosphere, or twitterverse has called K-Stew a "whore," a "home wrecker" or a "slut" I could put Octomom's kids through Princeton.
Stewart is barely old enough to wed Hugh Hefner but meanwhile, nobody is holding her 45 year old director responsible, or acknowledging the impact that his age and position of authority might have had over her actions. Had they been working at Chick-fil-A, he would have been fired, but instead he's all the more famous for making into K-Stew's panic room.
As a marriage and family therapist , I can tell you that affairs are rarely just one person's "fault" or responsibility. Often they are symptoms of relationship problems that were happening long before the affair took place.
But why is it so important that we stop hating on Kristen Stewart? Because slamming frowny-face, pouty-lip little Bella Swan is ruining your own sex life!
Ever heard of slut-shaming?
Slut-shaming is the action of attacking a woman or a girl for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings, and/or acting on sexual feelings. Furthermore, it’s “about the implication that if a woman has sex that traditional society disapproves of, she should feel guilty and inferior” (Alon Levy, Slut Shaming).
As K-Stew's every move is being scrutinized by the media, and as we, the consumers of media, continue to enjoy, repeat, or retweet its bogus findings, we perpetuate a culture whereby women's bodies, behaviors, morals, and sex lives are up for debate. We are trading in our awesome booty shorts, and leg warmers (or whatever makes you feel sexy), for stylish additions to the woman-bashing sections of our closets.
But you know that none of this is actually about K-Stew, right?
It's about your daughter, sister, wife, mom or mistress and what they think of themselves as women. It's about your son and the things he's going to grow up thinking about women. It's about you and your own sex life and the things that you will give yourself permission to do (or not do) in order to avoid being branded with a scarlet letter SLUT.
Ever called someone a slut in a pejorative, non girl-power way? Well stop it.
Slut-bashing is a cheap and easy way to feel powerful. If you feel insecure or ashamed about your own sexual desires, all you have to do is call a girl a “slut” and suddenly you’re the one who is “good” and on top of the social pecking order. [Leora Tanenbaum (Harper Paperbacks, 2000.): Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation, p. 238.]
We'll never be able to create the sex lives of our wet dreams, if we live in reaction to and fear of being witnessed in the very desire we yearn to embody.
Many of us happen to like getting f*cked and f*cking. We're not ashamed of our bodies. We have wild imaginations and intricate erotic blueprints. But instead of getting down to business and owning our desire, we walk around with Kristen Stewart shaped holes in our hearts and blush in embarrassment when our copy of 50 Shades of Grey is discovered.
So what can you do to stop slut-shaming and have a way more awesome sex life?
Be aslut. Be very aslut.
You like sex? Wonderful. You don't like sex? Wonderful. But stop judging and condemning other people for stepping out of narrowly defined views on sexuality, especially female sexuality. Your neighbor's sexual choices are your neighbor's sexual choices. Using words like slut, whore, prude, tease, and trampire are ways of cutting off your clit despite your vulva. Hit "unsubscribe" to the sexual double standard whereby men are gladiators for sleeping around and women are the school joke.
But most importantly, leave Kristen and Rob alone and start breaking dawn your own possibly vampiric sexual appetite!
Lonely Forever? No Way.