Your UnSlut Project

Submitted by @em_alex

I haven't ever been bullied. I'd like to start off with that. See, I didn't put up with someone's crap, and I shook off comments or hid my true feelings. I'm considered one of the happiest teenagers a person, teacher or fellow student, will ever meet. It's my reputation.

I live in Canada, where high school starts in the seventh grade. We don't necessarily have specific cliques, like jocks or popular people, although some have more specific titles. I have a large variety of people in my circle, but consider few of them as my closest, tell-them-everything type of friends, if I'm honest here. But just because I haven't been bullied or because we don't have extremely stereotypical problems at school doesn't mean that I didn't see and experience my fair share of crap, even if I'm nearing the end of my eighth year.

When I was in grade five, I had a best friend whom I still talk to on a daily basis and see a lot who had plenty in common with me, and her name was/is Mady. She had another best friend that she'd known a few years longer than me, who I guess felt threatened by my friendship with her or something. She openly ignored and resented me, never having a full conversation with someone who was near me or with me, and was always striving up trouble and inducing a game of tug of war between us three. I tried all the time to make amends and not get mad or yell or insult her, although she was worse when Mady or my other close friends weren't around. I knew she was going through a hard time at home - she was getting a bit depressed, her parents were in the beginning of what would become a divorce in a month or two.

And then I'm suddenly being accused of bullying her. Apparently her parents had called the school with plenty of accusations, and the principal announced it to all the teachers at the school, and I was 'questioned' over periods of time during the day, taken out of class, into the hallway, yelled at near the bathroom by this one teacher who I can't ever make eye contact with again. I was lucky, though - I was always the first to talk to the new kid, defend others, and was generally pretty nice unless you truly caught me on a bad day or hit a nerve. I had teachers who didn't believe these things, who knew me well enough to not begin with accusing.

The thing that made me the most angry was that the girl never agreed to just sit down with the principal and me and talk it out like I suggested. My dad always goes on about this whenever the fifth grade is brought up, and it's kind of annoying, but he goes, "You suggested something mature and well beyond your age, and the principal and _______ (the girl and her parents who accused me) didn't even consider it."

Now, fast forward to today. These days, I try not to ever join a bandwagon that's insulting others behind their backs when they don't know them personally. Sometimes, calling them a 'bitch, asshole, etc'. when I've truly, honestly experienced this particular person's meanness on a daily basis, seems fine to me. I need to vent, so I have the right to. It's a bit like when you write something about another person in your journal or diary because you're mad - that's your own, private thought. Others don't have a right to get mad at you after reading it and stuff, in a way.

Anyways. There's a girl at my school who has a large butt and large breasts, and she's just turned fourteen. Maybe she stuffs her bra, I don't know. The leggings she always wears are really tight, her shirts always fit perfectly, she takes 'sexy' pictures and posts them on social media... Maybe she's very confident. Or maybe she needs to do this to feel better about herself. But that doesn't, by any means, make her a "slut" like people call her.

That "slut"? She's a virgin, too.

Every time I try to defend my opinion on how absolutely FREAKING STUPID AND DEGRADING AND HORRIBLE AND INHUMANE the term 'slut' is, I seem to get pushed into a corner by others.

"Oh, she dresses like one, so that makes her a slut."

"She sleeps with guys and she's young, she's a slut then."

"Did you see that cleavage? SLUT ALERT."

JEEEZ. YOUR FAVOURITE TEENAGE POPSTAR SHOWS WAAAAAAAY MORE THAN THAT EVERY DAMN DAY.

"Slut" is a biased term, a term that seems to be ironic. A girl says to me, "Ugh, she's such a slut, I heard she has sex and she's only, like, thirteen or something." Says the girl who is wearing the tightest and shortest crop top and whose boobs were way smaller yesterday, "I can't believe she dressed like that, I can even tell that she totally stuff her bra. Fake much."

And "slut" is a word that I, personally, think should just NOT be available in our vocabulary. We need to get our damn priorities straight or society will never evolve.

To learn more about The UnSlut Project, check out the video below!