SHOCKINGLY, “SLUT-SHAMING” IS PRETTY MUCH ALL ABOUT INTER-FEMALE COMPETITION: What Women Mean When We Call Each Other “Sluts” And “Whores.”

Interestingly, young women from a lower class background who were trying to socialize with higher-status groups were more likely to be labeled “sluts,” the study found. Armstrong explained that lower-class women risked being called out and humiliated by the higher-class women for their clothes or behavior, which signaled they weren’t welcome in the group. (And not surprisingly further cemented their reputation for being stuck up.) Also interesting, as Double X reports, is how higher-status women were less concerned with how many men that lower-status women had slept with but whether the men themselves were lower status. Higher-class women, it seems, are highly attuned to the subtleties of status-by-association. Yet higher-class women were also (frustratingly) less concerned with what the lower-class women thought of them.

So the problem is having sex with low-status men. Got it.