On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good

by Elise Loehnen

In one longitudinal study, two researchers lived with college women for five years (through their first year after graduation) and watched how they navigated the world and their relationships. While the researchers were evaluating many factors as they tracked these girls and their trajectories, they ultimately published a study about their observations around class and the perception of sluttiness. They discovered that while all the women were slut-shamed an equivalent amount in private, the lower-class women faced far more public slut-shaming, particularly when they tried to befriend richer girls. As a journalist who covered the study writes, “The rampant slut-shaming…was only a symptom of the women’s entrenched classism. But more importantly, the allegations of sluttiness had little to do with real-life behavior. The woman with the most sexual partners in the study, a rich girl named Rory, also had the most sterling reputation—largely because she was an expert at concealing her sexual history.”