“SLUT”

In Melbourne today a mural of Kim Kardashian’s naked selfie has been defaced with the word Slut.

The artist, Mark Walls, admitted he was “pretty bummed” but said that it “was a given considering the subject matter.” The very fact that this might be “a given” is incredibly sad.

’ve never been the biggest fan of the Kardashians because I feel that they are given far too big a platform that they do far too little with. At first I rolled my eyes at the amount of times that her naked selfie was turning up on my newsfeed. She’s obviously all about the attention, she looks great, best just leave her to it. But the amount of controversy that it has stirred up has really become too much. And I must admit that Kim K’s open letter in response to the slut-shaming that she faced was surprisingly impressive.

I am empowered by my body. I am empowered by my sexuality. I am empowered by feeling comfortable in my skin.

The constant judgement that we continuously inflict on both other women and ourselves is growing old. Society shoves judgements of what a woman should and should not be down our throat and we swallow them; This women is too slutty, this women is too fat, too skinny, too frigid. When we hear it so much we can’t help but almost start to believe these kinds of things and sadly we start to transfer those values onto the beautiful women that we meet in our day to day lives. I will put my hand up now and say that I’ve been a culprit of this. At some point or other we’ve all unfairly judged others based on superficial values, even though we know it’s wrong.

In the words of Ms. Norbury in the infinitely wise and philosophical gritty teen drama, Mean Girls:

You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.

It’s time we learned to stop drinking it all in. Some women are empowered by showing off their bodies and other women are empowered by dressing modestly. We must be respectful of all of these women.

Why do we judge women like this? Would we judge a man in the same way? Would the mural of a naked male celebrity be branded with the word Slut?

The writer Hadassah Grace addressed this issue perfectly in a Facebook post. She described the ways in which men have been exploiting women’s bodies through their artwork for hundreds of years. Art history contains an infinite number of sculptures, paintings and photographs of naked women. The artist (almost always male) is credited and yet the woman in the picture never is.

A man takes a poorly framed picture of a teenage girl with a crappy camera, and we tell him keep trying, good effort, follow your passion, great job! A teenage girl takes a picture of herself on her cell phone and we call her an attention whore, tell her to cover up, tell she has no self respect.

We celebrate the naked female form when it is shown to us by men. Why then, can we not celebrate it when it is shown by the women who is flaunting ownership over her own body?

Nude images of women are shared on the internet without consent everyday. This type of sexual assault is used to manipulate, degrade and stigmatise against women. So I applaud Kim for speaking out about this. I applaud her for changing the power-play and for facing the stigma head on. In the same way that I applaud those women who are empowered by covering themselves up and helping to shed the stigma of this too.

In the words of Kim,

“You be you, and let me be me.”