Your UnSlut Project

Submitted by Anonymous

I myself have never been called a slut, but my best friend "Tori" has. We were just in sixth grade when this happened, and we were at our first school dance. Recently, right before the dance, my friend had gotten a boyfriend, "Jake." I hadn't ever really understood the point of a boyfriend in the sixth grade, but my friend was excited about looking nice for him.

We all went to the dance, and when Jake arrived I decided to give Tori and him their privacy, because I would have felt like the awkward third wheel. Plus, Jake didn't even know my name, so needless to say it was a bit awkward. I hung out with my other friends and didn't see Tori until the end of the dance, when we sang karaoke at the DJ booth.

The next day after the dance, Tori called me. Apparently Jake had posted a picture of the two of them online, on some social media that I forget the name of. It was taken at the dance. Tori was really happy about this, because she saw it as a sign that Jake wanted everybody to know that they were an item.

That is, she was happy until the mean comments started rolling in. A nasty girl in our grade, Bella, commented that Tori was a slut. After that, her friends commented mean stuff too, saying that she was ugly and a guy-stealer.

Tori was hurt and confused, and I did my best to console her, even though, because of my naivete at the age of twelve, I was unclear as to what exactly was happening. Jake didn't do anything to defend Tori online, so the nasty comments just continued to roll in. I told Tori that maybe this was a sign that they should break up. If he wasn't defending her online, then how could he be expected to defend her when she was right there, next to him? Tori had planned to do just that the Monday after the dance, but Jake gave her a pearl necklace for Christmas, which was just around the corner. The gift was enough to make her forgive him for not defending her.

Meanwhile, Bella and her friends were still cyber-bullying Tori. They had trolled on all of her social medias, writing hateful comments about every picture she posted of herself. Tori finally blocked them online, but that just encouraged them to do it more brazenly, in school. They started whispering nasty things about her, further fueling the fire. I had even gotten a note in my locker once regarding Tori. The note had said to tell Tori that the entire boy's travel basketball team wanted to get into her pants. I never showed that to Tori. I didn't want to make her feel worse.

Soon enough, everyone was calling Tori a slut.

And while I stuck by her through this, Jake grew increasingly more distant towards her. Still, Tori followed him around like a dog on a leash.

Finally, after realizing that Jake wasn't treating her in the right way, Tori broke up with him. Soon after, Jake started dating Bella, and ultimately, that stopped the rumors, because Bella had no reason to hate on Tori anymore. The normal order was pretty much restored, and Tori and I now continued to throw balls at Jake in our gym class because he had none.

But looking back on this now, I realized that I was no better than Jake, who distanced himself from Tori when bad things were happening. I was also no better than Bella and her friends, who were the ones doing the slut-shaming. I didn't speak up, so in effect, I kept this going for longer than it should have.

If you don't speak up when you see this happening to someone else, then you're just as guilty as the bullies. If you speak up, you could easily save someone's reputation. Maybe even their life.