“Good Girls”

Abstract

Women’s participation in slut shaming is often viewed as internalized oppression: they apply disadvantageous sexual double standards established by men. This perspective grants women little agency and neglects their simultaneous location in other social structures. In this article we synthesize insights from social psychology, gender, and culture to argue that undergraduate women use slut stigma to draw boundaries around status groups linked to social class—while also regulating sexual behavior and gender performance. High-status women employ slut discourse to assert class advantage, defining themselves as classy rather than trashy, while low-status women express class resentment—deriding rich, bitchy sluts for their exclusivity. Slut discourse enables, rather than constrains, sexual experimentation for the high-status women whose definitions prevail in the dominant social scene. This is a form of sexual privilege. In contrast, low-status women risk public shaming when they attempt to enter dominant social worlds.

Latina Girls, Sexual Agency, and the Contradictions of Neoliberalism

“…These structural contexts include unequal power relations between men and women within heterosexual intimate relationships and stigma in the form of classed and racialized gender stereotypes that construct girls of color and poor and working-class girls as hypersexual and irresponsible-as inherently Bat-risk^ (Armstrong et al 2014;Bay-Cheng 2015a;Bettie 2014;Chavez 2004;Cheng et al 2014;García 2012;Mann 2013). Such dynamics raise questions about whether or not girls who Bare always already presumed to be the (failed) embodiment of adolescent girls' sexuality^are able to exercise what Tolman et al (2015) refer to as Bembodied sexual agency^at all or to what extent such girls internalize neoliberal messages about how to express and manage their sexualities.…”

Unraveling the Slut Narrative: Gender Constraints on Adolescent Girls' Sexual Decision-Making

“…Although the feminist movement and general cultural shifts toward gender equity have changed some cultural assumptions about gender, many researchers have noted that traditional gendered notions of sexuality remain intact (Schalet, 2010;Tolman, 2012). The literature documents that adolescent females from widely divergent backgrounds contend with powerful assumptions regarding appropriate and inappropriate ways to behave sexually (Armstrong, Hamilton, Armstrong, & Seeley, 2014;Asencio, 2002;Lees, 1997;Payne, 2010). While specific rules varied by context and social class, adolescents in all studies believed that those girls who stepped over the line deserved social reproof.…”

“…However, exactly what constituted an appropriate "love" relationship and how many successive partners a girl was allowed to claim she loved without transgressing norms of appropriate behavior was unclear. Armstrong et al (2014) observed that conditioning the acceptability of sexual involvement on love applied to females having vaginal sex and not necessarily to other forms of sexual engagement (e.g., heavy kissing, mutual masturbation, oral sex). While the loosening of constraints does provide a more flexible space for girls' sexuality, the borders of this accepted space are tenuous.…”

“…This research is best represented by a recent study of college women (Armstrong et al, 2014) that depicts slut labeling as a discursive and interactive process where females assign the label to other girls in order to establish boundaries between themselves and groups of women who they identify as less-valued in their social context. In their study, Armstrong et al (2014) found that the boundary across which the slut-shaming process operated for the sample of college women was primarily that of status and social class distinctions.…”

“…This research is best represented by a recent study of college women (Armstrong et al, 2014) that depicts slut labeling as a discursive and interactive process where females assign the label to other girls in order to establish boundaries between themselves and groups of women who they identify as less-valued in their social context. In their study, Armstrong et al (2014) found that the boundary across which the slut-shaming process operated for the sample of college women was primarily that of status and social class distinctions. Other research has focused on the reclaiming of the term "slut" and the process by which some women attempt to reposition the narrative to embrace the slut label as an act of resistance and defiance, most notably seen in the global phenomenon of slut walks (Attwood, 2007;Ringrose & Renold, 2012;Wininger, 2011Wininger, /2012.…”