The Devout and the Dirrty: Consumer Choices in Bewildered Times

Throughout the centuries philosophers and religious thinkers have encouraged women to feel grateful for their subordination. It’s only against the red light of ‘Dirrtiness’ that the chastity movement could ever have struck us as fresh.

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“I just wanna say, it’s not bad to wear a promise ring because not every guy and a girl wants to be a slut, OK?” (Jordin Sparks at this autumn’s MTV awards). Stirring sentiments there from the American Idol winner. But wait! Before we rally ourselves accordingly, Sparks has issued the following amendment; “I wish I would’ve worded it differently. Someone who doesn’t wear a promise ring isn’t necessarily a slut”, (Entertainment Weekly). 

Phew! Okay, we unenlightened many who roam the bleak wastes outside The Church of Teens and Trinkets, put down the cat o’ nine tails for a moment: We are not necessarily sluts.

With their air fisting enthusiasm and Mickey Mouse Club soundtrack The Silver Ring Thing, True Love Waits and other such US chastity movements have met with a luke warm reception across the pond. Pah! “Americans”, we scoff, with a Clarkson-esque roll of the eyes.  For one thing, our reality pop stars know to speak when spoken to. We can scarcely imagine Simon Cowell and the good people at Syco Records tolerating this kind of backchat from Leona Lewis.

But like it or not, religious youth movements preaching abstinence are on the up in the UK too, albeit in our more characteristically sombre stylings. And in youth culture more broadly, terms like ‘slut’ and ‘ho’ have never been more in vogue. You can scarcely saunter through the Internet blog spots or gossip sites without the accusation being pelted from every quarter.

It’s all too easy to dismiss these devout younglings as hormonal half-wits as yet incapable of rational thought. But in these hedonistic times of fast love and fluid morality, what can this rising minority teach us about the world we live in? Clean cut and covered up, they face us: Today’s new rebels.

So what’s prompted this mutiny from the good ship decadence? What of our dreams of sexual freedom when young people are taking refuge in the promise ring or hijab? And why has the sexual revolution not relegated terms like ‘slut’ into the dark prudish past of sexual censorship?

In terms of sexual liberation, we are a people confused. The non-pious female majority of today will wear their Playboy bathrobe with pride. When our men, bound by lad’s mag obligatories, are out of action on a Thursday, we don’t complain. We’ll even have a sneaky peak when he’s out the room, (“fake, fake, real, fake”).

But Tina from finance snogs two men at the same Christmas party and her status as super-slut is unshakable. Even as men renew their yearly subscription to Razzle and women fall over themselves for the Carmen Electra Aerobic Striptease video; we hold on tenaciously to our right to brand one another as sluts. 

Why are women of this “post-feminist” era, supposedly free to frolic the pastures of empowerment, not snuffing out such terms as the enemy in their midst? Because of course, the word ‘slut’ is never used without deploying a certain contention; that promiscuous, or seemingly promiscuous women are cheap and worthless. Without this belief, the word collapses, meaningless.

“But men can be sluts too!” I hear you cry. Are you sure? Occasionally, and with all the thrill of the truly novel, the claim might be leveled at a fella. But not without “man” in front, (male-whore, man-slut, etc) to signal this quirky departure from the norm. And so it’s not just the religious among us casting the eye of condemnation over female sexuality.

And yet clutching onto the motifs of pornography is now a mainstay of female celebrity success. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and The Pussy Cat Dolls are prime exemplars. Christina Aguilera has succeeded in selling Dirrtiness as a “post-feminist” template for sexual empowerment. She has taken the torch from Madonna and pushed the goal posts akimbo. Long gone are the arty, iconoclastic nods pivotal to Madonna’s erotic licence.

The tendency to herald pop’s recent freak-athon as erotic empowerment is widespread. Out with Reclaim the Night demos and in with the clear heels! As the heroines of popular entertainment engage in ever-intensifying playoffs, thrusting their crotches at us in a frantic bid to prove themselves the ‘Dirrtiest’, they are being awarded subversive status, as defiant exhibitors of “raw…sexual expression”, (Lesley Robinson, Mediations).

Who needs feminism when you have ‘Dirtiness’? Amongst this pantomime of orgasmic moaning, pole dancing and faux lesbianism, we are being encouraged to a-spy the enigmatic form of gender equality. That’s right! Here comes liberation as you’ve never seen it before, “gift wrapped” in a red PVC cat suit. If this is how notions of sexual empowerment have been hijacked, is it any wonder young people are scrambling for the nearest chastity belt?

No question, in pop music today we are witnessing an aggressive sexuality which has oft been frowned upon as an unsightly deviation from “natural” femininity, that loathsome serpent threatening to undo civilized society. The figures that have a long while lurked omnipresent in the erotic consciousness, confined to the shadowy recesses of the horror/porn genres, now swarm out into the daylight of mainstream lucrative success. This ‘Dirrty’ phenomenon marks a further flushing out of these shadows. And as consumer culture usurps and suffocates other political manifestos, we are being besieged by old sexist myths, rising from the earth un-dead.