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Body Talk

I try to steer clear from epithets. I don't like to be called out of my name so I tend not to call people out of their names. I especially eschew words like whore, tramp, slut, that are disproportionately used to label women who are assumed to engage in a lot of sexual activity. These words are all definitionally specific to women although sometimes applied to men, an etymological fact that speaks to our society's gendered double standards that for simplicity's sake I'll refer to as sexism. With the exception of men and women who have sex for money, which I call sex workers, there are no such people as whores or tramps or sluts. Promiscuity is relative. 12 sex partners in a year to one person could be perceived excessive while to another quite healthy. Add gender in the mix and the bar by which one is considered a whore, a slut and/or a tramp is significantly lowered. In fact, for a woman it includes looking like you want sex (low cut blouse), you're due for sex (winding at the club) and you've had sex (mussed hair). This type of pervasive thinking could be avoided by following the grade school maxim, "Don't judge a book by its cover," but too many men and women are invested in judging and relating with women not even by our outward appearances but what our outward appearances mean to them. For example, on my evening commute I might bite my lip as I consider some weighty philosophical question (tofu vs. seitan) and some man on the train could take that as an indication of arousal and comment on my breast size. I'm almost inclined to say men are from mars but I know better. We are all from the same planet but we're continually hardwired to behave in alien fashion. It's been going on so long for many of us, its difficult to imagine any other way of being.

Sasha in action at the BET Awards Tuesday (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

Here it's worth mentioning Beyoncé's alter ego Sasha: a figure on whom she projects the calculated sexual suggestiveness of her performance that both fuels and threatens to ruin her success. Of course, Beyoncé's concerns are informed by her Christianity, southern-rearing and the image consciousness of her family but also the age old virgin/whore vice. Now, I acknowledge that Beyoncé's, I'm sorry, Sasha's performative sexual expression is all about satisfying male desire but that problematic is for another time. Now, I'm more concerned with its intensity. She's rabid in "Déjà Vu" but she craves respectability and since our society often won't allow a woman to be both she's developed a multiple personality disorder. Can't blame her. We women constantly counter or co-sign what our bodies say, a fraught and wearing exercise that I can only hope will someday go the way of LaTavia.

• Beyoncé
• Sexism

Posted on June 28, 2007 2:41 PM

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