A special SlutWalk hosted by model, actress and singer Amber Rose took place in Pershing Square in Los Angeles on Oct. 3.
SlutWalk empowers women to look gender inequality and double standards about sexuality straight in the face and proceed to flip them off. Many have called into question whether Rose is an appropriate advocate for this movement in America.
However, there couldn’t be a more qualified person to speak on this subject.
Evidenced by her past relationship with Kanye West and her past marriage to Wiz Khalifa, Rose is no stranger to the images and reputations rap music seems to advocate. In fact, during her SlutWalk this year, Rose cried onstage while addressing the crowd after she repeated a song lyric Khalifa wrote about her: “[I] fell in love with a stripper … but fell outta love quicker.”
Although that time in Rose’s life is long gone, it is still perceived as acceptable for “a stripper” to be Rose’s only identifier, even by her ex-husband.
Rose endured another incident of public slut-shaming when West stated during a radio interview that he had to take 30 showers after his relationship with Rose before sleeping with current wife Kim Kardashian.
Since both of these slut-shaming statements have come from famous rappers, Rose is often accused — even by West himself — of using publicity from these statements and the status of these exes to further her own fame.
Similarly to the music industry, the film industry allows men to flaunt promiscuity, while the women they lust after are labeled as sluts or the ones lacking class.
The men of “Magic Mike” portray the highest level of desirability; women ranging anywhere from middle-aged to preteen literally drool at them in their seats. While these actors’ physiques depict a stereotypical, testosterone-packed image, most of the characters in “Magic Mike” aren’t just seen as sexual objects.
The men have other goals in life. The main showstopper, Mike (Channing Tatum), has dreams of starting and leading his own small business. Dallas (Matthew McConaughey) doesn’t just participate in stripping; he basically manages the entire male entertainment business across the country. In “Magic Mike XXL,” characters Tito (Adam Rodriguez) and Tobias (Gabriel Iglesias) create and manage a food truck business, which — of course — becomes so wildly successful that they plan to expand nationwide by the end of the movie.
On the flip side, female stripper characters such as Jade in “The Hangover” are portrayed as unambitious and, because of their line of work, undesirable outside of the workplace.
Oh, and the trend that they are almost always single mothers only adds to the image of female strippers as “damaged goods” for the type of pricks who still archaically believe that single parents aren’t straight-up bosses — which they totally are.
In fact, it wouldn’t even be going too far to suggest that women strippers are almost always illustrated as one or more of the following in film: desperate, trashy, impoverished, dirty, unintelligent and, last but not least, slutty.
These women almost always need to be defended by a man, if their purity ever does actually come into question. An example of this is in “The Hangover,” when Alan (Zach Glifianakis) reprimanded Stu (Ed Helms) after Stu referred to Jade (Heather Graham) as a whore: “How dare you, she’s a nice lady!”
The world needs more Alans almost as much as it needs more Ambers.
Because Rose has experienced slut-shaming first-hand and for the majority of her life, I cannot think of another person with the personal motivation and public power to ensure SlutWalk’s complete success as a catalyst for change.
I encourage anyone who has fallen subject to slut-shaming or who just wants to see a long-overdue change in this primitive mindset to strut a walk of NO shame like nobody’s business.
Because, really, how you may have chosen to spend your night is just that — nobody’s business.
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