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The most recent Misanthropologist poses the question, is “Slut Face” a thing? and goes on to wonder if it’s possible to broadcast that one is a slut without really adorning oneself like a slut (i.e., can a facial expression indicate sexual willingness). I couldn’t help but think that this is an unbelievably complicated, loaded issue and one (potentially) having a lot to do with fashion. So:
What does it mean to “dress like a slut”?
Actually, before we go any further, let’s just set aside the issue of whether or not words like “slut,” “whore,” “tramp,” “trollop,” “cum dumpster,” etc are pejorative (actually, maybe women can’t ever really “take back” cum dumpster). This is a conversation about communicating stuff through what you wear… not about morality, promiscuity, fuckin’ dudes or bein’ repressed. That’s better left to a sex and dating columnist who cares.
My first instinct is to say: misogyny is boring and the only people who’d designate women as sluts based on the way they dress are stupid and literal.
And then I pause for a minute and think: tramp stamps, lucite heels, anything Tila Tequila wears, fake nails, crop tops and/or their accompanying belly button piercings, contestants on Rock of Love, really any contestant on a reality television elimination-style dating show… these are all pretty obvious visual markers indicating… something.
There are certainly garments we associate with being a slut: hyper low slung and way tight pants, microminis and short skirts, those shirts that are really just loops of fabric (I’m still unclear how those work), towering plastic stripper heels and wearing nighties or teddies or just a bra out to gross, obvious clubs where people think it makes you desirable to pay $400 for a bottle of well vodka and sit at a damn table.
I’m tempted to just say this isn’t a matter of being a slut, it’s just in poor taste.
But don’t women wear these garments to indicate they’d like to have sex? Or at least to draw attention from men who’d like to have sex with them?
After all, there are countless ways to dress in a manner that’s sexually suggestive without being overt, literal or, uh, gross and to attract attention from the opposite sex at the same time. There are also very few items of clothing I can imagine would utterly refuse a toning down, that with the right styling you can wear just about anything and it won’t look “slutty” (except maybe fetishized Halloween costumes and, uh, the photo attached to this very article).
I think it’s important to distinguish what it means to dress for yourself and to dress for other people, and I think somewhere in there lies the answer to the question of whether or not it’s possible for people to draw a stupid conclusion like whether or not you sleep with lots of different people.
I also find it had to believe that a girl could honestly dress for herself and come off looking like a so-called slut. Because when people deduce girls are sluts from the way they’re dressed, those people aren’t really able to make a judgment call about a lady’s sex life based on her wardrobe… but are usually just identifying a want (and sometimes a desperate want) of attention.
The fact of the matter is you can’t look at a woman and know she’s a slut based on the way she’s dressed. Just like you can’t look at a woman and know she’s a virgin or a Catholic or an Australian or a Girl Scout based on the the way she’s dressed (unless she’s wearing an Australian-flag colored backpack stuffed with rosaries and Girl Scout cookie order forms and a pin fastened to the side that reads “Ask Me About My Hymen!”) (but even then you’re just guessing).
So you can rely on a collection of prejudices, cliches and preconceived notions and come to an unscientific conclusion that a person is a slut, but you absolutely cannot determine from the way a person’s dressed whether or not he/she has a lot of sex. Unless, I guess, she’s wearing a white shirt that says in deathly-serious-across-the-chest-Helvetica: “I engage in sexual congress with a different individual every night of the week and no, I’m not joking, and yes, this t-shirt is a proposition. Would you like to see my clitoris piercing?”
What you can glean from the way a person dresses is both infinitely complex and mind-bogglingly simple: you can kind of deduce how a person wants to represent himself or herself. That’s it.
So I guess, yeah, you can dress like a slut, but that doesn’t mean you are one. And people who assume anything are being pretty lazy. And whether or not you should dress “like a slut” is a different matter altogether. What you should do is dress for yourself and if people get confused because they’re being lazy, literal, misogynistic or dumb, well, fuck em.
There’s no such thing as a vicious breed of dog, only dog owners who want a vicious dog, and pick whatever dog is in vogue.
People choose what they wear to present an image. Of course you should be allowed to wear what you want, but by the same token we can infer what we want from what someone wears.
In the words of the immortal Simon Doonan in his book “Eccentric Glamour,” One should only dress like a hoochie dancer if one is, in fact, a hoochie dancer.
Because the power of fashion is that clothes send signals and those signals need to align with the senders feelings. So “Say NO to HO” unless you are, well, a ho. It’s less confusing for everyone.
I really want a tee shirt with the words “sexual congress” written in deathly-serious Helvetica.
Oh, Cardiff, you had me at “Ask Me About My Hymen!”
We’re no longer living in an age where a woman has to discreetly send out signals that she’d like to hook up. We can come right out and say it. I don’t think communicating this through how you dress is something people really do anymore. They dress in what they think they look good in, which can reflect poor taste, but I think pulling motivations out of the way someone is dressed requires so much reading-into-it that it’s completely unreliable.