When someone tells you you look like a prostitute, you start to think about the possibility that you are one.

You wonder if actual prostitutes ever get told they look like prostitutes. You wonder if they find it offensive. If you are being called something that you are, no matter how derogatory the label (Nazi! Christian! Bisexual! Cult leader!), are you gonna be like ‘Fuck you!’ or ‘Perception is strong in this one’ and do a Yoda bow? Maybe they accept it. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they are like ‘Well, that’s what I was going for, so, whory looks ftw.’

You start to look at what you are wearing. Especially the shorts that brought this on. You mentally catalogue the rest of your wardrobe, dividing it in lengths of what may or may not be acceptable by the labellers.
You wonder if you should stop wearing those shorts that you like so much, the ones that make you look like a woman of the night, or so you’ve been told.
Are they too tight? Or is it too much thigh? Maybe the latter – they look more like old school swimming costumes (flappily decent) as opposed to the barely there booty shorts of your youth. Now those ones…those ones, perhaps, would have warranted that word.
That word.
It plays in your head. Turning. Again.

But clothes do not a prostitute make, do they? The same way clothes are not the cause of rape. Which you try and explain as well. I mean, anyone can be a prostitute. It isn’t that hard, is it? Or maybe it is. I don’t know. I’m not one yet. Maybe. The supply and demand chain is always at an imbalance, and let me tell you, you can be fully clothed while doing it. In fact, pushing panties to the side in the dark is easier done with loose trousers than booty shorts, no?

Maybe you are a prostitute, or maybe it is just that your choice of clothes indicates that you do, indeed, desire rape with all the fibres of your being (and the fibres of clothes you’re wearing). Maybe you’re just gagging for it, underneath a sheer veneer of pseudomorality. Maybe you woke up this morning and chose something that you thought screams ‘Kindly ignore human values and drag me into a dark alleyway right now as I pretend to protest.’ Because of the obvious clothing/assault correlation.

Or, or, maybe you are a prostitute because you like sex far too much (hence the clothing choices). Maybe you want it too much and enjoy it too much. Ask for it too much. Because heaven forbid a woman should ask for – and get – something she wants in regard to what she wants in or around her vagina. Maybe she should wait for the guy to ask her for it. Don’t tell the world the secret – everybody wants sex! Even gasp women. But you have to act like you don’t. Coz you’re not supposed to. Because it makes you…you know what.

Maybe your theme song should be Freak like me by Adina Howard and everytime you hear it you should turn it up and look suggestively around the company you’re with. Maybe it should be your ringtone and your call back tune. Maybe it should be the soundtrack of your life and your go-to karaoke song. Because a freak is a prostitute. And so is a person who wears short luscious shorts. And so is the girl standing on a corner trying to ignore the cold for her next trick. And so are you.

tSN