SLUT (slŭt) noun.

by Abiola Abrams

I was always jealous of the girls we called sluts.  I was one of the finger wagging, moral policing, high-roaders and former Girls Scouts that sat in the front row of every class and raised our hands practically before the questions were asked. When I grew up in the late eighties, slut was probably the worst thing a woman could be called.  We were taught to just say no to all kinds of things and AIDS seemed like it might be lurking behind every toilet seat. Teen pregnancy threatened to ruin us  The so-called sluts seemed so much freer than the rest of us, flipping off society with their don’t give a damn attitudes. They seemed happy, like by sleeping around --or appearing to-- they were living slightly above the law. 

I was one of a handful of kids of color at an elite New York City all-girls prep school that went from kindergarten to twelfth grade.  I was reminded often by my parents and my peers that in addition to regular teen aged concerns, I also bore the burden of representation.  “You are not only representing yourself in the prep school community.  You are representing every African American young woman in America,” Mrs. Johnson, one of the two black teachers in the school told me when I racked up too many tardies.  

Jeez Louise.  So if Abiola met a boy at Le Panto’s, our after school watering hole, and made out with him as Lizzie Paddock seemed to do on a daily basis, not only was Abiola a probable slut, but she was marking every young lady of African descent that might grace the halls of Brearley, Spence, Chapin, and Nightingale-Bamford (our neighboring all girls schools) as sluts too.  My social life could single handedly dismantle civil rights and set black people back forty years. 

Madonna’s Sex book, daring music videos and cutting edge lyrics made all of us girls at Brearley want to be exactly like her when we grew up.  When our imitations of her wild style of dressing – cut off shirts, rolled up skirts and public bra straps -- compromised the integrity of our dull navy uniforms, our headmistress added a new rule to the manuals on proper apparel: No underwear is to be worn as outerwear.  After all, we were not only representing ourselves, but also The Brearley School and its mission of providing an academically rigorous liberal arts education to girls, by truth and toil.  Our playground motto was Other girls marry doctors, Brearley girls become doctors.  Evidently, our Madonna wannabe wardrobes threatened to dismantle women’s rights and set back the hundred and ten year old history of Brearley.  My behavior as a young woman could again degrade my tribe. 

So who was having all the fun while I was upholding the honor of my race and gender? The best known of the young women we called sluts in high school were Dana, who was caught having sex in closet, Ariel, who claimed to have contracted a case of crabs by trying on jeans in the Gap, and Elle, who became a teen mother at sixteen.  They are now respectively a real estate developer, investment baker and day care matron, so I guess that they were no worse for the wear.