Actress and model Amber Rose hosted a women’s empowerment walk through her foundation — The Amber Rose Foundation — specifically dealing with the issue of slut shaming. The empowerment walk, also known as “Walk of No Shame,” was to bring awareness to the word “slut” and the damage it can do and the connotation surrounding it.
At her first ever slut walk, held Oct. 3, Amber Rose drew 6,000 attendees who frequently deal with slut shaming within the women’s equality movement. Women who have personally dealt with being slut shamed wore bustiers, knee-highs, and even halter tops at the event telling the world that enough is enough.
While protesting the topic of sexual injustice and gender inequality, Amber Rose gave a heartfelt speech to the crowd. As she speaks about her own instances of being slut shamed she points out three in particular that hurt her the most.
She begins talking about the very first time, at 14, just coming into her teenage statehood: “I was in a closet with this boy, I had just started making out with boys. He told me to “get on my knees.” After she said “OK” the boy pulled down his pants and opened the closet door so all his friends could see — even though nothing was actually happening.
That very moment, not knowing what oral sex was or even being sexually active she was labeled as a slut by a group of boys at her school.
Amber continued, discussing, former loves, Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa who also slut shamed her.
Her speech made me realize that slut-shaming is extremely prevalent within today’s society and that I have both slut- shamed and have also been slut shamed.
Through my experience in slut- shaming others it was always something I did to hurt others or even get back at people who slut-shamed me. This is something I did without considering the definition of what a slut truly was. It also helped me to realize how much I hurt those girls who I called that. As I saw, Amber Rose you could see it was definitely more than a word that sparks hurt.
This leads me up to say be mindful of the words you chose to call others, especially in times of anger (if you’re anything like me).
