Meghan McCain, 24-year-old daughter of Sen. John McCain, took to her column in the Daily Beast to declare “Don’t Call Me A Slut” after she posted a provocative pic on Twitter of herself late Wednesday night which prominently featured her boobs. “I have struggled to accept the fact that the way I look in a tank top comes off more ‘sexual’ than a flat-chested woman,” McCain wrote. “And once again I was reassured by the media that someone with my cup size should always be covered up. Or what, I’ll be seen as a slut?” The Daily Beast

 

Hazing: It’s not just for Chuck Bass at the Skull & Bones Society anymore! High school girls in New Jersey are now pretending they’re badasses by putting younger girls on a nasty “slut list.” The New York Times reported that catty seniors at Millburn High School in wealthy Millburn, New Jersey have circulated a “slut list” on which they scribble dozens of names of “pretty and popular” incoming freshman with “crass descriptions” on loose-leaf paper. The school principal, Dr. William Miron, said the tradition has taken place for over a decade, but this year hundreds of copies of the “slut list” written up by sports team members apparently made the rounds in the hallways. Why is the Times calling this “hazing”? This sounds like full-on bullying to me.

It’s one thing for a comedian like Tina Fey to make fun of how inarticulate and fame-hungry Palin is. It’s another thing to say she dresses like a slut. But that’s what David Letterman of the Late Show did last night in his Top 10 roundup of “Highlights of Sarah Palin’s Trip To New York City,” when he said Palin must have “bought makeup at Bloomingdale’s to update her slutty flight attendant look.”

The rest of the list is actually pretty hilarious, but come on, we don’t have to be respectful of women only when we like them. Clip above!

 

When Carrie Prejean lost last month’s Miss USA pageant because (some think) she opposed gay marriage, after which she did an ad for the National Organization for Marriage, rather than attending to her Miss California “duties,” she made it pretty clear where her loyalty lies. It makes sense strategically—her anti-gay marriage stance ruined her appeal for many, but it did increase her popularity with a powerful few. Prejean hedged her bets by distancing herself from the Miss California Organization and lining up with those who had her back. She wasn’t going to be a pageant queen forever, after all.

She should have handed over her crown to someone who was interested in fulfilling those Miss California duties—whatever they are—since she had better things to do. But she didn’t and because of that—and Perez Hilton’s relentless campaign against her—Prejean stayed in the spotlight and the inevitable happened. Topless photos! Of a beauty queen! Who believes in God! The hypocrisy! Let the slut-shaming begin!

Our society has a lot of thoughts about what women should be, and many of these ideas have to do with weight and promiscuity. The ideal is that a woman is thin and pure. In an article on The Huffington Post, writer Charlotte Hilton Andersen considers whether it’s better to be called a slut or fat—two names that women usually don’t enjoy being labeled. So, which would you rather? Justify your choice in the comments!

One of my most shameful moments as a person was in the fourth grade. I was fairly invisible within my class, but had a desperate desire to be liked. There was another girl in my class who also was not popular and was picked on fairly often for being a little grubby. One day, in what I guess was an attempt to appear cool and funny to my classmates, I picked on her too. I told her she was dirty and that she reminded me of used toilet paper, whatever that means. Then I told her she was a slut. She cried. I still wasn’t popular after that, so the point was lost, and I’ve clearly spent the last 18 years thinking about how mean I was to her. But the thing is, I had no idea what the word “slut” even meant, I just knew it was a bad thing to call a girl. I still don’t know what a slut is and that’s because I don’t think there’s any definition that everyone can agree on. The debate over what makes a person a “slut” is so…ridiculous. Can’t we just retire it already?