Girls Behaving Badly… Are You Ready For Another Rant?14:23 Aug 01 2007
Times Read: 735
I’m a girl, as you should have realised by now. Not only am I female, I am young woman who lives in the Western world. And that means I live a Western lifestyle and am most familiar with Western standards and expectations. In other cultures women hide their bodies and faces, are subservient to men, walk ten paces behind their husbands, stay at home to cook and clean and so on. Men in those cultures may see women as having only one purpose: to give birth to the next generation. But will that generation be different to the existing one? Will women become equals? Will men accept that women have more to offer than their wombs? That’s life in other countries, but that is not life here.
Yes I think that some girls take the idea of minimal clothing in public too far but how do we know that’s not just for show. Maybe she’s twenty-six, wearing almost nothing and all over a guy in a nightclub. She could still be a virgin. She could be waiting for the right guy to come along and having some fun in the meantime. On the other hand, maybe she was a teenage mother enjoying a night out. Or she could be dancing with a man she’s been dating for eight years. You cannot tell, by looking at someone for thirty seconds, who they are and where they’ve come from. You cannot understand what’s going on in someone’s head if you’ve just met them.
If you went out with me this weekend you would see me up dancing to industrial music. From that image, would you guess I was a horse rider? If you met me at the stables, would you image my favourite top to be a corset? I doubt it. People judge from appearances but their judgement is influenced by their own upbringing. In the Western world we may find different ideas to be ridiculously old-fashioned. But maybe someone from one of those cultures would look at me and call me, even in my baggy clothes, a slut.
But what is a slut? A derogatory term, yes, but there’s more to it than that. They say that a slut is a woman with the moral standards of a man. I believe that is based upon the idea that men want sex more often than women. But do they? Maybe one guy isn’t really bothered about how often he has intercourse and maybe one woman is a complete nymphomaniac. There are exceptions to every rule.
An online dictionary gives the following as a definition:
Slut (noun)
1. a dirty, slovenly woman.
2. an immoral or dissolute woman; prostitute.
Slovenly, if you’re unsure, can be defined as untidy or unclean in appearance or habits.
Now let us consider this. Point one, taken literally, could be you going outside to get the milk first thing in the morning in your dressing gown. It could be you after you’ve gone caving or mountain biking. It could be you having a cigarette since that’s often classed as an unclean habit. Would you call a smoker a slut if you met them on the street? Or yell across to your neighbour that she’s a slut for not getting dressed up and putting on her make-up before grabbing the milk for a cup of tea. I doubt it. Although, we should have a look at make-up and clothing in a minute but let’s finish this first.
Point two probably creates a modern image of a slut. I’m sure you can see them in your head. Too much make-up. Skirts almost short enough to be belts. Tops that look like they she be in the children’s section of Glitterworld, which, I must add, is a shop that I just made up. High-heeled shoes that they can barely walk in. And then there are the women of the night. But how many prostitutes do you think woke up one morning and decided it would be fun to have sex with strangers for money? Oh sure, maybe it sounds a little bit glamorous and exciting when phrased that way but the reality of it is that most only go into the business in an attempt to make enough money to survive. Some are even forced into it by other people.
There are women out there selling their own bodies, the only thing they have to offer, just to feed their own families. Maybe things are better now than in, say the nineteenth century when Jack The Ripper was terrorising London, but prostitutes are still killed. They still get forced to do things they don’t want to. They can still be raped. Do you think they’re enjoying themselves when they’re on their fourth man of the day and they’ve lost count of how many guys they’ve had sex with? Do you think there’s any pleasure in it for them? And yet people still say that they wouldn’t be there if they didn’t want to be. If you’re a runaway from a rich family you have somewhere to go back to but what if you grew up with nothing, lost your family and ended up with nothing? What would you do to be able to eat everyday? How far would you go?
Someone, who is about to be deleted from my friends list, claims that all Western women are sluts and prostitutes and that we sleep with, on average, one hundred men by the time we reach our thirtieth birthdays. That’s an average which would mean that there would have to be women out there sleeping with many more men than that. Personally, I cannot see these figures being accurate. He is one of the men that view us as baby factories and claims men could never love us for our minds because he believes we are stupid. I’m currently at university and, though I’m not saying I’m a genius, there must be more to me than what’s between my legs.
Yes, we Western women aren’t above using our female wiles to get our way. Are there many among us who haven’t, at one time or another, used high heels, corsets, handcuffs, our legs and cleavage, or whatever is your method of choice to manipulate a guy? It’s not right and not fair to them but they’re not above using such techniques with us either. Need an example? How’s answering the door shirtless? Or casually brushing against you when there was plenty of room to move past you without doing so?
Is it so wrong for us to find happiness without being married? And look at how many marriages fail. Surely people, men and women alike, should be allowed to find happiness wherever it lurks, be it in same-sex relationships, opposite sex relationships or even just on a night out with friends. Don’t forget, humans are inherently sexual beings but sometimes it’s not about sex. Sometimes it’s about power and that’s how rape happens. And that’s not restricted to the Western world. It can happen anywhere. It can even be someone you trust.
I’m going to stop ranting now but, before I go, here’s something for you to use to test your puzzle solving skills. Men and women, here’s a riddle for you:
I came forth as one of three, but out of the seven you only see me. What am I?
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