Society's attitude toward sex may be evolving, but many people still have a long way to go. This is obvious whenever a woman confidently takes control of her sexuality and gets judged for it on the internet and social media. The following celebrity quotes about slut-shaming show that while no one is immune to hate, everyone has the power to loudly and unapologetically stick up for themselves.
Reading these quotes and recalling these sexual "scandals" makes it clear that anything is game for haters and trolls. If your jeans are tight and your top shows cleavage, folks are quick to criticize. If you didn't remain celibate for an arbitrary amount of time after your breakup, people are quick to judge. Twerking and empowering your fans to own their sexuality? Haters, triggered! Whatever way you slice it, women are constantly getting hate for owning their bodies and loving themselves, and that's unacceptable.
The following famous ladies wasted no time clapping back sharply when faced with haters policing their sexuality, or that of other women and girls they empathized with. Prepare to stan all your favorite actresses, female musicians, and TV personalities even harder — here are nine iconic celebrity quotes on how slut-shaming is utter B.S.
In November 2018, Ariana Grande came to Little Mix's defense when Piers Morgan went in on the girl group via Twitter. First, the journalist criticized Little Mix for riffing off a Dixie Chicks photoshoot. Then he took shots at Joan Grande, Ariana's mom, when she came to Little Mix's defense. Among other things, Morgan responded by saying "I'd just prefer [Little Mix] use their talent to sell records rather than their nudity. As your own daughter does...!"
That's when Ariana set the record straight. "I use my talent AND my sexuality all the time because i choose to. women can be sexual AND talented. naked and dignified. it’s OUR choice," she tweeted. "& we will keep fighting til people understand." Thank you, next!
Back in January 2019, the City Girls dropped a video for their club-banger collab with Cardi B, "Twerk." The video serves as a follow-up the the City Girls' twerk challenge, where they set out to find the 20 best twerkers in the country. There's boats, butts, and bikinis on the beach — everything you could expect from Cardi, JT, and Yung Miami. In a salty response, journalist Stephanie Hamill tweeted, "In the Era of #meToo how exactly does this empower women? Leftists, @iamcardib, feel free to chime in. THX."
Cardi wasted no time in clapping back. "It says to women that I can wear and not wear what ever I want. do w.e I want and that NO still means NO. So Stephanie, chime in..." Cardi tweeted. "If I twerk and be half naked does that mean I deserve to get raped and molested? I want to know what a conservative woman like you thinks." Hamill then tried to smooth things over by pivoting the conversation to the fact that she couldn't twerk, and then invited Cardi to be a guest on her show. Nice try.
In November 2019, rapper T.I. was a guest on the Ladies Like Us podcast, where he claimed to accompany his then 18-year-old daughter Deyjah to annual gynecology appointments to "check her hymen." Many celebrities, including Chrissy Teigen, Iggy Azalea, and Madeline Brewer, reacted in rightful anger. One of the strongest condemnations came from Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi, who tweeted, "The double standard of the patriarchy is truly insane. Young women are fully capable of making their own informed decisions about their bodies and their sexuality." Preach!
Along with her haunting voice and melancholy visuals, Billie Eilish is most well known for her oversized outfits. But in her 2019 Billboard "Woman of Year" feature, she made it clear that her affinity for streetwear isn't about modesty. "Sometimes I get this response from parents like, 'Thank you for dressing the way you do so my daughter doesn't dress like a slut,'" Eilish told Billboard. "And I'm like, 'Whoa!' That is the opposite of what I'm trying to do... If anything, I'm trying to make it easier for your daughter to wear what she wants."
In December 2019, Lizzo got heat for twerking at a Lakers game. The hate was at the intersection of misogyny and fatphobia, which Lizzo expertly addressed via Instagram Live. “Nothing really breaks my joy. I’m a really solid, grounded person, and I know that I’m shocking because you’ve never seen in a long time a body like mine doing whatever it wants to do, and dressing the way that it dresses and moving the way that it moves," Lizzo said in her livestream. "I’m not going to quiet myself. I’m not going to shrink myself because somebody thinks that I’m not sexy to them.” Amen to that!
If you're a card-carrying member of Bachelor Nation, you probably remember the infamous Luke P. and his reign of terror throughout Hannah B.'s season of The Bachelorette. One of the most cringe-worthy moments was when he asked Hannah if she'd slept with any of the other contestants, and tried to leverage their shared Christianity to slut-shame her when she answered that yes, she had. Hannah absolutely wasn't having it and shut it all down by saying, “I have had sex and Jesus still loves me.” Let Hannah's T-shirt-worthy clapback remind you: You can decide how you'd like to practice religion and how much sex you have accordingly. No shame, end of story.
In April 2020, Kendall Jenner was photographed on a road trip with rumored-boyfriend Devin Booker. When TMZ tweeted a link to the story, one troll responded with a now-deleted video of three men passing around a little girl with the caption, "Nba players passing around Kendall Jenner." To that, Twitter user @demi1220 quipped, "Maybe she passing them around." Jenner chimed in with a quote tweet, saying, "they act like i’m not in full control of where i throw this cooch," which is just *chef's kiss.* Because honestly, why do people act like others aren't in control of their cooch when they're owning their sexuality?
OG bad b*tch Megan Fox is still facing slut-shaming from haters. Yes, even in 2020. After parting ways with Brian Austin Green, her husband of 10 years, Fox is now dating Machine Gun Kelly. While doing press for her new film Rogue, she opened up about being on the receiving end of discrimination and harassment based solely on the fact that she's a woman.
"I'm going through some stuff right now where perceptions are still very misogynistic and sexist and one-sided. For whatever reason, people are very trigger-happy to call me stupid or call me vain or call me a slut, which is crazy," Fox told ET in August 2020. I was in the same relationship for 15 years, you know? It's bizarre, this image that gets projected onto me that people have just accepted and that's lived for over a decade. And that I never really did anything to earn in the first place."
Long before "WAP" broke the internet, Megan Thee Stallion faced some serious slut-shaming after the release of her album Fever and her leadership during Hot Girl Summer — and she wasn't shy about calling out the patriarchy's double standard. “A man can be as mediocre as he wants to be but still be praised,” Megan told Marie Claire in April 2020. “A man can talk about how he’s about to do all of these drugs and then come and shoot your house up. But as soon as I say something about my vagina, it’s the end of the world?” she asked.
If there's anything you can gather from his handful of quotes on slut-shaming, it's that people will uphold the patriarchy even when it doesn't make any sense. Folks are always going to look for things to criticize. So why not (safely and consensually) do whatever you want anyway?
