Society has a profound love to herd and label people. We put the concepts that we grasp from some person and shelve it in some random cubby hole. Navel gazing has indeed become the modern practice of philosophy. What people do in their own time is no business of mine. However, the free-spirited nature post-postmodern Tinkerbell who cozily lies in the post-postmodern definition of slut (meaning the easygoing kind of pal with a tarty tongue and an all-encompassing mind) is the kind of slut Manny Blahnik was probably referring to. However, it’s a cruel world out there.
Reputation can precede, contain or surpass a person’s character. However way you put it in the end, it hardly navigates towards anything veritable. After all it’s a distillation of people’s judgment over your visible actions. We take these assessments as truth like it were the human equivalent of the Dewey decimal system. We forget that a good rep can easily be as misleading as a bad one (more often than not vise versa). How many good on paper fellows have I met ended up as prime fuel meat for my nightmares? How many good on paper gals have come off as either brats, psycho or just plain boring (if you’re really lucky you have all three in one package). It’s like book-to-movie shifts that have plagued the celluloid community. Rarely do the good words in print translate well in motion. Reputations are pretty much the same. From gems to delilahs, and harlots to hallowed – it becomes one big surprise party.
So does a good reputation do you good? In a work environment it’s all you have. You screw up once, be prepared to pay for it tenfold. You gossip, say the wrong thing, ask the wrong person out for dinner, turn down the wrong person for dinner, and you can count on it that you can’t even order water in your own tavern. This character branding just puts so much pressure on everyone. You put pressure on yourself to remain on the higher echelons of the caste system (which is not a bad thing to aspire for given the right intentions) and others find themselves questioning their instincts when they discover anything contrary to the preconceived notions. We lose trust in ourselves and become dependent on the dust jacket descriptions.
Bad reputations are far more delicate to handle. In a world so tenacious, there is simply no room for any fladdoodle. It is our natural intention to treat with vilipend those who are cloaked in questionable moral character. After all, didn’t we learn in our scouting days that the badges you earn and wear proudly on your chest signify all your good deeds? Same with evil deeds we have no choice but wear the scars of our errors. We surely know where it begins (sometimes as far detached as provenance to something pertinent like a white lie) but where does it end?
My parents always told me never to swear in front of boys, change boyfriends too soon (have a grace period, dear Mom would say), wear skirts too short and to never call them. If these were the virtues esteemed by the sacred institution of the marrying kind, then I would have nothing of it. Romantic as I may be if I left it in the hands of those good-for-nothing playstation addicts who I am to flatter in my calf-length circle skirt. Then my story would have the fireplace factor of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. If a forward thinking gal is a fast girl to mummified Victorians then I don’t mind at all. But really more than anything, these delilahs make for good material. Then there are the missteps of conduct. I comfort friends who are reeling from a scandale episode performed the night before by telling them that no one remembers it anyway but them. Of course, this is hardly true. No matter who or what you are onlookers will always have the notion that you are the drunk who sucked face with a random who. Whether random who is fight or die, a girl (oh this is where the double standard part comes in) will have to mount that moosehead on her hall of shame for all to view. This is especially true in Manila. The alchemy of boredom, small-mindedness, a cloistered populace makes for a scarlet letter day for any wayward folks out to have some fun.
I learn from lessons of original fast chicks like Mary Magdalene, Cleopatra and Isadora Duncan, and realize that these stories are told as cautionary tales. Loose women die or live tragic lives. When sluts do make it they hire some image guy and a spokesperson and incinerate their sordid pasts, which more or less make up the most interesting part of who they are.
Society has given special dispensations though (which further reiterates how the science of the rep has the poignance of the biology of Sea Monkey). On the province of promiscuity a rich girl who knocks boots more often than a White Chapel whore is called bohemian or free-spirited or, at the very worst, troubled or eccentric. A tart with a debit account is sadly just a slut. Case in point: Madonna then and now, Paris Hilton (sudden cover girl and millionaire in her own right) and Monica Lewinsky. Something for bulimics to think about during their peak hours.
Why is it then that despite our liberal selves we still sniff at a woman who has slept with a man too many? Our pre-judgments are a reflection of our fears of what we can be if we live against the vein of convention. Some are simply so afraid to be what they secretly envy. At the end who would you rather honestly be: Kiki Montparnasse or poor Catherine of Aragon? So next time you find yourself sniffing at the heels of a red dressed vixen, think about the dusty copy of Nancy Friday’s Sensuous Woman and your neck massager under your bed.