The Grand National in Liverpool is always an occasion for ridicule in certain sections of the press, and this year was no exception. Open up* The Daily Mail* on Sunday morning and every female racegoer who’d had a slight fall or a gust of wind blow up their skirt had been splashed across the front page. It’s not just an attack on scousers, who are continuously stereotyped as trashy and immoral in the nation’s second most popular newspaper. It’s an attack on all women, who may at some point be hit with a gust of wind or have a few too many and topple over after a night out. But this year was different, this year wasn’t just an attack on fashion choices, or boozing too much. This year they added in that extra bit of misogyny, in an article written by Bel Mooney, just for fun I guess.
The title begins ‘I wish they didn’t look so cheap’ and I roll my eyes. Why is it a thing that what clothes your wearing denote your value as a person? But hold on, don’t get me riled up too soon, it gets worse:
'Their spilling cleavages, dimpled knees and flashing thighs spoke of sex, sun and sleaze’
The idea that it's still a widely-held opinion that cleavage or thighs inherently mean you want sex fills me with dread. It’s the same thinking that has condoned sexual assault for years, what victim-blaming rests on and what so many people in our generation are trying to protest against. I used to go out wearing dresses with cleavage and not think of it as a statement. But now, after years of sexist remarks from gross men (and I’m only 22) I do it to prove them wrong. And when I don’t sleep with the men who presume that because I'm wearing a low-cut top I'm up for it, I can see what they're thinking: ‘she dresses like a slag but she’s not a slag…what?’
Because, Bel Mooneys of the world, even if I walk out the house completely naked, it still says absolutely nothing about how many sexual partners I’ve had OR how likely I am to sleep with someone. My body, and what I choose to put on it, has absolutely nothing to do with sex. Whether I want to have sex or not is actually, believe it or not, decided by… MY BRAIN. I know. Mad.
Oh, and she has more to say:
‘I’ll never understand why everybody — from 48-year-old Jennifer Aniston, pictured this week in a horrible, one-shouldered, leather mini-dress, to the 16-year-old pouting her latest selfie — wants to look like an easy lay.’
Beware parents, your 16-year-old’s latest pouting selfie apparently means she’s an easy lay! Why else would she purse those lips OTHER than to show off her sex appeal? She can’t just want to take a cute picture and have it mean nothing, can she?
Alas, even at 16 years old , women are being slut-shamed and poorly educated about sex and consent. Not only does this tell them that sleeping with a lot of people and therefore being ‘easy’ devalues you as a human being, it also perpetuates the myth that men are the only ones who can be in control of sex. That they’re the ones who have to convince women to sleep with them, and if the woman does fall for his tricks she is easy and therefore less valuable. And it also tells men that these things are true, which is just as dangerous.
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by an ex-tutor I had at Sixth form, who wanted to know what I was up to these days. I asked him the same thing to which he responded, ‘other than looking at your blatant cleavage flashing you mean?’. I sat, a bit shell-shocked that someone who used to teach me economics after school would come out with such a brazen comment, but I ignored it. To be honest, I just couldn’t be arsed to teach yet another creepy guy the lesson he so desperately needed. Then came the follow ups, the ‘I am a white male therefore I am entitled to everything’ questions about why I hadn’t responded. I told him, and after a long, healthy debate about sexism he told me he was ‘just a fool who was tryna check if you were a bimbo’ (you know when your eyes roll so far back into your head you go temporarily blind? That’s what happened then.)
So that's lesson number two: having a cleavage out not only means you’re a slag, it also means your thick as shit. Be careful ladies, if you don’t hide those two mammary glands on your chest at all times, you lose brain cells! You just can’t possibly be smart if you don’t keep them hidden, it’s like a law of nature or something. Honestly, the idea that your clothing choices have any bearing on your intellectual or sexual capabilities is baffling. Yet this is a global, deeply socially engrained way of thinking that was perpetuated in a national newspaper just this weekend. By the same token, you could assume that wearing a hat means you enjoy anal, or walking backwards means you have a photographic memory… the two literally have absolutely no link and never will.
So, once and for all, PLEASE can we stop spouting this bullshit? Can we stop judging people’s intelligence or sexual activity based on what they’re wearing and how they’re wearing it? IT’S FUCKING RIDICULOUS. I just want to wear a nice dress and not have it be anything to do with sex, is that too much to ask?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.