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Young women today are encouraged to express themselves sexually. Yet when they do, they are derided as "sluts." Caught in a double bind of mixed sexual messages, they're confused. To fulfill the contradictory roles of being sexy but not slutty, they create an "experienced" identity on social media—even if they are not sexually active—while ironically referring to themselves and their friends as "sluts."
But this strategy can become a weapon used against young women in the hands of peers who circulate rumors and innuendo—elevating age-old slut-shaming to deadly levels, with suicide among bullied teenage girls becoming increasingly common. Now, Leora Tanenbaum—senior writer and editor for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, author of the groundbreaking work Slut!, and the writer who coined the term slut-bashing—revisits her influential work on sexual stereotyping to offer fresh insight into the digital and face-to-face worlds contemporary young women inhabit. She shares her new research, involving the experiences of a wide range of teenage girls and young women from a variety of backgrounds as well as parents, educators, and academics. Tanenbaum analyzes the coping mechanisms young women currently use and points them in a new direction to eradicate slut-shaming for good.