Slut-shaming in Popular Music & Song

but i think we're in multiple communities at once all the time!

Well, this is also about the conflicting demands placed on young women - like, there is this one culture which says "PRETTY is a rent you pay for occupying a space called female, you must look - and BE - sexually available to men at all times" and at the same time, this conflicting culture which says "expressing your actual sexuality or desire in any way that is slightly outside the norm makes you a BAD WOMAN and a NASTY HO so don't you dare" and the cognitive dissonance between those two strands of the same culture is what makes girls' heads explode. But it also makes for the kind of tension that makes really interesting art, so maybe watching women negotiate that path can make for some really good music?

I mean, that line from Electrik Red - forget the exact words but the whole "I'm not a nasty ho - well, I am, but I'm classy, though" is about negotiating that cognitive dissonance, and that makes for some damn fine art on that particular song.

I don't think I've used that retort since the second grade. I will call out most female pop stars when they're entirely uncreative or biting other artists' styles and every one of the new "it girls" is guilty of doing that. Nobody has their own style and frankly, I think it sucks and it makes me want to not listen to pop music for another 5 years.

I think this is the same baton that a lot of the white middle class indie brigade used to beat on nu-metal during the turn of the century was as well? Insofar as slut-shaming isn't just aimed at women, but was also an attack weapon against the likes of Limp Bizkit and similar who refused to kowtow to a moralistic view of what's "acceptable" sexual behavior.

??? I don't know anyone who hated on Limp Bizkit for their 'sexual behavior'. unless the hat was some kind of kink thing I just didn't know about.

^^and often considering the discographical context of songs that appear slut-shaming can be illuminating - eg, is tlc's "silly ho" evidence that they changed their position since they released "ain't 2 proud 2 beg" as their debut? or is it worth focusing on the distinction between the focus on sexual freedom as a means of feeling good about yourself of the latter, and sleeping around solely because you think it'll make men like you of the former.

xps

I mean, that line from Electrik Red - forget the exact words but the whole "I'm not a nasty ho - well, I am, but I'm classy, though" is about negotiating that cognitive dissonance, and that makes for some damn fine art on that particular song.

yes, that was the beauty of the electrik red album for me, how it seemed to be a conscious attempt to negotiate this territory. that didn't stop certain people from calling them unfeminist though.

I haven't read the "Female Chauvinist Pigs" bookl, but my thoughts are basically that if a woman is empowered by her open attitude towards sexuality, then 'slut-shaming' becomes less effective. It's only when it comes from a more vulnerable place, ie when the woman sleeps with guys to compensate for low self esteem, that I feel that the whole slut-shaming thing gets a really nasty edge...

but I'd bet it's not all zeros and ones here, and I really wouldn't know where the line is...

(I mean, I kind of feel the whole thing is despicable across the board anyways)

"PRETTY is a rent you pay for occupying a space called female"

i love this!

(though i think that is actually a different strand from the stuff abt sexual availability to men! to me there is - perhaps it's part of the cog-diss tension you talk about - a distinction between the kind of socially enforced 'attractive-enough' that women have to conform to, and being specifically sexually attractive. a lot of which is abt being classy!)

I thought a lot of times this was used more in a context of a woman who cheats on her boyfriend and/or tries to steal other women's boyfriends. Which is transgressive but also just shitty.

if a woman is empowered by her open attitude towards sexuality, then 'slut-shaming' becomes less effective. It's only when it comes from a more vulnerable place, ie when the woman sleeps with guys to compensate for low self esteem, that I feel that the whole slut-shaming thing gets a really nasty edge

surely shaming someone for their behaviour is shaming them for their behaviour, no matter what their personal and unknown-to-you reasons are?

i mean, if you slept around and ppl were like 'it is to compensate for the low self-esteem, so sad' all the time, it wouldn't matter if you actually felt empowered by yr sexuality, there's still a bunch of people shaming you about your behaviour.

Yeah, Cis OTM. The thing about slut-shaming is that it's aimed at others. "This is my sexuality, good or bad, it's mine and I own it" is Empowerment; "Ew, you nasty ho, you dirty slut, but it's clearly to compensate for the poor self esteem" is slut-shaming.

(Sub question, can you slut shame yourself? Are there lyrical examples of this? early Hole probably has some. It would obviously be problematic for the same reason, but I don't know that anyone would get called on it.)

I guess I just figured a necessary pit stop on the road to empowerment was reealizing that other people were going to make unfounded assumptions about you, and there was no good reason to let the approval of people you don't know dictate how you live your life...?

This is an interesting case...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mvAMEaWgTQ

It's very obviously giving both barrels to the cheating man, and one of the absolute canonical archetypes of blaming the man rather than the woman, and I think it manages to express the anger and the betrayal that indicts both halves of the cheating couple, and yet still, there are lines that make me uncomfortable. (Though I think the whole *point* of the song is to make the hearer uncomfortable, so there's that.)

I think this is the same baton that a lot of the white middle class indie brigade used to beat on nu-metal during the turn of the century was as well? Insofar as slut-shaming isn't just aimed at women, but was also an attack weapon against the likes of Limp Bizkit and similar who refused to kowtow to a moralistic view of what's "acceptable" sexual behavior.

― Inspector Anthony Slade, Friday, October 29, 2010 7:43 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

eh i dunno. i'm sure the young men of limp bizkit ran through a bunch of groupies, but who cares, their "unacceptable sexual behavior" in my understanding was cheering on a bunch of sexual assault at woodstock

p.s. the "pretty is not a rent" thing is brilliant, but I can't claim credit for it...

http://www.dressaday.com/2006/10/you-dont-have-to-be-pretty.html

i can't really take any of the lyrics of electrik red seriously, they all read to me as what t. nash would like a hot girl to tell him

Sub question, can you slut shame yourself? Are there lyrical examples of this?

i was gonna mention a lot of madonna's erotica - which "thief of hearts" is taken from - certainly "bad girl" would count (although that song is complex and psychologically true enough that just calling in slut-shaming wouldn't be enough)

I think Erotica is a good example of a singer taking pretty much every possible stance on this issue.

i can't really take any of the lyrics of electrik red seriously, they all read to me as what t. nash would like a hot girl to tell him

Yeah this was my problem. I don't really buy the "they bullied me into taking their approach" party line. He would say that.

Sub question, can you slut shame yourself? Are there lyrical examples of this?

OP cites 'Fuck And Run' up there which seems pretty textbook if I understand this whole thing correctly

Also re: the Pussycat Dolls there's a world of difference between "this is my sexuality, good or bad, it's mine and I own it" (Lil Kim, Madonna, Trina) and being packaged as male wank fantasy. They overlap as well but it's not one and the same thing.

Re self-shaming, Ani DiFranco's "Light of Some Kind" has some of my favourite lyrics on this kind of thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-s-qiCrk-M

Also re: the Pussycat Dolls there's a world of difference between "this is my sexuality, good or bad, it's mine and I own it" (Lil Kim, Madonna, Trina) and being packaged as male wank fantasy. They overlap as well but it's not one and the same thing.

and how exactly do you judge who is on which side of the boundary? as erika's post said, the pussycat dolls' lyrics were mostly quasi-feminist in their female solidarity/male gaze/non-submissive stance - certainly a lot more so than destiny's child or, for that matter, lil kim or trina, who explicitly sell themselves as male wank fantasies.

Also re: the Pussycat Dolls there's a world of difference between "this is my sexuality, good or bad, it's mine and I own it" (Lil Kim, Madonna, Trina) and being packaged as male wank fantasy. They overlap as well but it's not one and the same thing.

That also kind of fits into what Ariel Levy's book was actually about (and yeah, I can understand how a poor understanding or a skimmed reading of her arguments could make it seem like she was slut-shaming) - the difference between the two.

And I have read and acknowledge a lot of the criticism of Ariel Levy which was saying "but what about the women, where is *their* Agency in all this?" But that was kind of Levy's point, that this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum, and even though it might be an individual's choice, that choice is shaped by the options that *are* available.

Levy was certainly NOT saying "women who choose to pole dance are sluts" - what she was saying was actually "A culture in which women are paid/valued more for dancing topless on a bar than for being called to The Bar has really fucked up priorities and we need to change those priorities, not shame women for their choices." Like, if your choice is make ££££££ for dancing on tables vs £ for waiting on tables, how much of a choice is that? And how it's really hard to even have a conversation about Agency when you are dealing with a moneymaking organisation (like Girls Gone Wild - given their recent lawsuits) that doesn't even bother with *consent* let alone Agency. But the commodification of sexuality is a much bigger and thornier issue than slut shaming and probably not within the remit of this thread.

I think Erotica is a good example of a singer taking pretty much every possible stance on this issue.
― Tim F, Friday, 29 October 2010 14:22 (43 minutes ago)

yeah, & "thief of hearts" is a great take on the slut-shaming, because she's so knowingly dressing up and playing such an extreme role, it's almost a parody. she doesn't care that's she's lost her man at all really (if there ever was one even), she just wants to role play, act ridiculously camp & dramatic (like "bye bye baby" she's almost morphed into some draq queen-esque figure), and set up some completely depersonalised figured just so she can say "bitch", break some glass a few times, and exercise some bravado. it's more like she's throwing yet another persona out there to hide behind, to disguise how much of a wreck she actually is, and it's "bad girl" that shows this reality - she's the thief of hearts (or at least similar to her), and it's not just the lifestyle but the weight of the personas she's been creating that is crippling her.

Best line in "Thief of Hearts" is "Here she comes, litte miss think she can have his child, well anybody can do it..."

Sort of deliberately self-deluding in the same way as "Irreplaceable".

and then there's "thinks she'll get respect if she screws it", because of course so much of these slut-shaming songs is about status - losing it & needing to reassert it.

so much of these slut-shaming songs is about status - losing it & needing to reassert it.

^^^^^^exactly.

social status, too: often slut-shaming is barely-veiled snobbery, in that brazenly sluttish behaviour is held to be common or vulgar

it's interesting that we haven't yet discussed the (many, many) songs by MEN which slut-shame! maybe because there's less "point", it's what we expect of them, esp taking genre into account...?

Yeah I think you answered your own question Lex. It's still interesting, but not in the same way as women shaming eachother.

Because it's somehow inherently more interesting when women do it, because of the asserting status/power thing and the whole political jostling thing of it.

When men do it, it just seems gross.

Also I do think it's actually more common in women than in men, because of the "slut shame the other angle in a love triangle" aspect and that competition over sexuality in that way is one of the few ways in which our society *allows* women to exercise power - men have so many other ways in which they can demonstrate power over others, while women have this tiny constrained space in which to do it, so they use it more like a fine tuned weapon rather than the blunt dismissal of when men do it.

nothing to add, great thread. request to tim & lex, though. if you wanna highlight specific lyrics, could you, you know, post them (instead of youtubes)? way more efficient.

^this was my idea behind the thread. sigh...

this is like 50% of Zeppelin's catalog

Got a little woman and she won't be true...

Except it seems that the point is rather that the shame comes from female peers.

i didn't realize for a long time that dolly wasn't praising jolene's behavior.

jolene isn't slut shaming at all though. POV hasn't an unkind word to say about her rival. she's humiliating herself herself in desperation, different kind of thing.

Loretta Lynn "Fist City" (love this song)

You've been makin' your brags around town that you've been a lovin' with my man
But the man I love when he picks up trash he puts it in a garbage can
And that's what you look like to me and what I see is a pity
You'd better close your face and stay out of my way
If you don't wanta go to Fist City
If you don't wanna go to Fist City you'd better detour round my town
Cause I'll grab you by the hair of the head and I'll lift you off of the ground
I'm not a sayin' my baby is a saint cause he ain't
And that he won't cat around with a kitty
I'm here to tell you gal to lay off of my man if you don't wanna go to Fist City

Come on and tell me what you told my friends if you think you're brave enough
And I'll show you what a real woman is since you think you're hot stuff
You'll bite off more than you can chew if you get too cute or witty
You better move your feet if you don't wanna eat a meal that's called Fist City
If you don't wanna go to Fist City...
I'm here to tell you gal to lay off of my man if you don't wanna go to Fist City

Shakey OTM x2

is jessie's girl the opposite of this?

Here are the "Light of some Kind" lyrics:

i wish i didn't have this nervous laugh
i wish i didn't say half the stuff i say
i wish i could just learn to cover my tracks
i guess i'm not concerned enough with getting away with it

'cause every time i try to hold my tongue
it slips like a fish from a line
they say if you want to play
you should learn how to play dumb
i guess i can't bring myself to waste your time

'cause we both know what i've been doing
i've been intentionally bad at lying
you're the only boy i ever let see through me
and i hope you believe me when i say i'm trying
and i hope i never improve my game
yeah i'd rather have these things weighing on my mind
and at the end of this tunnel of guilt and shame
there must be a light of some kind
there must be a light of some kind

i must have blown a fuse or something
cause it was so dark in my mind
she came up to me with the sweetest face
and she was holding a light of some kind
and i still think of you as my boyfriend
i don't think this is the end of the world
but i think maybe you should follow my example
and go meet yourself a really nice girl

'cause we both know. . .

in the end the world comes down to just a few people
but for you it comes down to one
but no one ever asked me if i thought i could be
everything to someone
there's a crowd of people harboured in every person
there are so many roles that we play
and you've decided to love me for eternity
i'm still deciding who i want to be today

This song's like...a sea urchin. Some people love it and some people are disgusted by it.
-Todd Rundgren

I hate more or less everything on the fourth side. Or, well... No... I don't, but I hate the idea behind side 4.

I'm seeing a WHOLE lot of slut-shaming in the reaction to Keri Hilson's sluttastic new music video

is it possible to clearly separate slut shaming directed at pop performers from more general objections to sexual explicitness & crassness, or from complaints about appropriateness of content to venue/audience?

nope

What is this the nineteenth century?

i'd agree, NV, given the inclusion of the word "clearly" in my question. take it out, though, and there's a lot of room for equivocation - room enough to recognize that some instances of what might look like slut shaming might be better attributed to other impulses.

and yeah, it is the nineteenth century. and the eighteenth and the 12th and the 22nd. at least some of the time, somewhere, in this or that mind or culture. standards & values are hardly lockstep universal.

hey, I was v. ambiguous at my daughter singing along to "If You Seek Amy" but I guess my response to that wasn't exactly "OMG that Britney's shameless".