The female definition of slut

With women, it's always all about alpha access:

As US News & World Report explains, the researchers found that “slut” is an all-purpose insult. But calling someone a “slut” had more to do with perceptions of another woman’s femininity rather than with her sexuality. In fact, less sexually experienced women were actually called sluts more often, according to the research.  Thanks to the class stratification found on the campus, young women perceived other women from their own social group as the “right” kind of feminine.  As Armstrong explains, “Wealthy women are making a distinction between being classy and trashy, whereas women with less money are equating stuck up and exclusive and not nice to being slutty.” As blogger Amanda Hess put it on the blog Double X, employing the slur “was more about policing women’s looks, fashion, and conversational styles.” For example, women from wealthier backgrounds were able to afford the beautifying treatments considered by their peer “classy”: wearing department store makeup, getting their nails done, tanning. Young women who can’t afford these services and presented themselves as feminine in other ways were seen as “trashy.”

Interestingly, young women from a lower class background who were trying to socialize with higher-status groups were more likely to be labeled “sluts,” the study found. Armstrong explained that lower-class women risked being called out and humiliated by the higher-class women for their clothes or behavior, which signaled they weren’t welcome in the group. (And not surprisingly further cemented their reputation for being stuck up.) Also interesting, as Double X reports, is how higher-status women were less concerned with how many men that lower-status women had slept with but whether the men themselves were lower status. Higher-class women, it seems, are highly attuned to the subtleties of status-by-association. Yet higher-class women were also (frustratingly) less concerned with what the lower-class women thought of them.

There is nothing that women find more hateful than lower-status women stealing the men to whom they are attracted. Hence the incessant attacks, and the not-infrequent labeling of women with considerably less sexual experience as "sluts". Among women, the term is more about policing status than behavior.

I was good friends with a beautiful swimsuit model back in the day. Most women HATED her on sight; she was the sort of girl who could just about start a riot by wearing a tanktop. She was from a small town and didn't get around a lot, but that didn't stop women from openly calling her a slut despite knowing nothing about her. Ironically, the control tactic backfired, as she didn't change her behavior, but she did start dressing a lot more provocatively. As she once said: "they're going to call me names anyhow, so why not make sure their boyfriends are all looking at me."

Women are very hard on women, particularly lower-class women. Another girl I knew couldn't stand being around my social circle because she'd never been to college. None of the men cared, (I doubt most of them even realized it), but it seemed that some of the women always found an excuse to remind her of it.