Quote of the Day | March 5, 2009: Sluts and Studs?

From Chuck Klosterman's 2003 "low culture manifesto," Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs:

Here's what I mean: For the past twenty-five years, culture has been obsessed with making males and females more alike, and that's fine. Maybe it's even enlightened. But what I've noticed -- at least among young people -- is that this convergence has mostly just prompted females to adopt the worst qualities of men. It's like girls are trying to attain equality by becoming equally shallow and selfish.

Whenever I see TV shows like Fox's defunct Ally McBeal or HBO's Sex and the City, I find myself perplexed as to how this is sometimes viewed as an "advancement" for feminism; it seems to imply that it's empowering for women to think like all of the stupidest men I know (myself included). We've all heard the argument that there is an eternal double standard about promiscuity: The cliche is that girls who sleep around are inevitably labeled "sluts" while guys who make the rounds are dubbed "studs" (in fact, I hear people making this particular point far more often than I hear anyone literally calling women "sluts" or men "studs"). What's interesting about that argument is the way it's been absorbed by my generation and all the generations that have followed: The consensus is that this double standard is wrong, so -- therefore -- we should all have sex with as many people as possible, regardless of our gender. Somehow, this became logical.

And that's why modern fifteen-year-old girls are like fifteen-year-old boys from 1981: They're saturated not only with internal sexual intensity, but also with the social belief that they should be having sex.

Tags: Chuck Klosterman, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs