Bases Bloated: Shame on us for Slut-shaming

Sluts are everywhere, you guys. They’re trying to seduce you with their short shorts and naked selfies. They’re corrupting the minds of young people everywhere with their laissez-faire attitudes about the nipple. “It should be free!”, they cry making you stare at that sinful round circle. They’re turning you into a sex fiend because you know sluts, they just wanna do it with everybody with reckless abandon. We must shame them until they take their wanton ways and shorts back to the kitchen where they belong!
Slut-shaming isn’t new. One of the most well-known instances occurs in one of our favorite storybooks, The Bible. When fictional couple, Adam and Eve, are unleashed in the Garden of Eden, there’s a whole situation with a snake. Adam is tempted to do something that he shouldn’t. The guy who created the first couple spends his days pervily watching them from above and doesn’t really get involved in their biz until the whole snake ordeal. Does the guy who created Adam and Eve give the dude shit? Of course he doesn’t. He gets all up in the woman’s face. Sure he tells Adam that he kinda sucks and is all like “original sin and whatever” but he’s def slut-shaming Eve during the whole thing.
In the past two weeks, slut-shaming reached a new public low when Kim Kardashian posted a selfie on Instagram. In this selfie she’s wearing her birthday suit with two black bars strategically covering her lady bits.
The commenters went nuts. Everyone from Bette Midler to that one cousin you can’t stand but have to be nice to at bar mitzvahs weighed in. Many of the commenters gave Kim shit because she’s a mother. Apparently there are certain things you just can’t do when you’re a mom. One of the things is use your assets (in Kim’s case, her body) to make money to provide for her children. Shame on her for giving her two kids everything they could ever dream of! Shame on her for marrying Kanye West who also uses his assets to make money! And most importantly, shame on her for not being Beyoncé! Whatever Bey does, we love it because she’s considered an entertainer, but whatever Kim does, we hate even though she’s also an entertainer. My personal hero, Amber Rose, pointed out the classist system we’ve put in place for our celebrities in an eloquent post on Instagram. If you’re not familiar with Amber Rose and the good work she does to further women’s rights, you’re missing out.
The reason we hate Kim Kardashian is because she doesn’t look like us. She looks pulled and tucked with a silhouette that is impossible to obtain without general anesthesia and Hollywood’s best plastic surgeon. It’s not the fact that she’s had work done that bothers me, it’s the fact that she hasn’t opened up about it. I say have all the plastic surgery you want. If someone wants to hand me $15,000.00 for a septoplasty and liposculpture, I am so down. I can’t breathe properly and there’s no way I’m eating baked chicken and broccoli for every meal to get more definition in my abdomen. As for Kim and her elite plastic body, if she’d cop to having fat sucked out and breasts lifted and enlarged, I would be very accepting of her. The problem with keeping your surgeries mum is that you are giving the young women who look up to you false hope. There is no amount of calorie counting and cardio that will give you Kim’s figure. Conversely, she is not responsible for anyone’s eating disorder and if someone covets her impossibly perfect figure that’s between me and my therapist not her fault. That being said, it’s her body and we need to stop slut-shaming her for what she does with it whether she admits she’s had work done or not.
We spent years telling Renée Zellweger she looked like a stoner who just swallowed a lemon but when she gets sick of our taunts and gets surgery, we tell he she looked better before. What is wrong with us? We as a society, need to take a collective chill pill and take a long hard look at our standards of beauty. We need to stop labeling certain women sluts for baring all when we label other ones classy or courageous. It shouldn’t be an act of bravery to take your clothes off. It shouldn’t be an act of sluttery either. It should be something you do for you because you want to.
For a generation that wants to free the nipple, we’re making an awfully big deal about one woman’s pair. The next time Kim Kardashian posts a naked picture on her Instagram let’s give her the same respect that we give Jennifer Lawrence when we come across a pictorial she did for Vanity Fair where she’s wearing nothing but a snake: Screencap it and text it to our boyfriend.