The walk of shame: a normative description.(Critical essay)

ON A GIVEN SUNDAY MORNING IN CITIES ACROSS AMERICA, women and men will perform the "walk of shame." Although both sexes exhibit the behavior, the women seem particularly stigmatized and obvious. Look for her--she is the one who is still wearing the micro-mini skirt, the backless shirt, and the six-inch heels. It's Sunday morning but she doesn't look like she is heading for church. No, those are the same clothes that she wore to the bar last night in an attempt to look attractive to the opposite sex. And it seems to have worked because she appears to have spent the night somewhere besides home.

Although this phenomenon existed when I was in college, I was unaware of it. Perhaps it was less obvious because my undergraduate education took place in a town that did not have much of a vibrant night life and the student body was widely dispersed through town. I was first told of this when I taught at a large northeastern university while studying for my doctorate. My students told me that it was common for people to mercilessly taunt women who returned to their homes in their clubbing attire, especially if they were returning home to the dorms. When I asked a colleague who had attended that university as an undergraduate about the walk of shame, he explained that he and his roommates would eat breakfast every Sunday at a restaurant located on a major thoroughfare on which students would likely be walking home or to the dorms and look for both men and women doing the walk of shame. For them it was breakfast and a show.

Although it has been discussed in the popular media, the walk of shame seems to have largely escaped scholarly scrutiny. (1) This essay considers how the descriptor "walk of shame" functions to discipline female sexual practice by reinforcing gender stereotypes and punishing women who transgress socially constructed norms. I examine how the term is used in popular culture and the norms that these uses prescribe. The language that we use to describe an action serves a normative function, especially when negatively valenced. As such, I conclude with a call for language strategies that redefine female sexual practice in a more positive way.

The Walk of Shame in Popular Culture

As S. I. Hayakawa observes, "The ignoring of contexts in any act of interpretation is at best a stupid practice"; (2) thus it is useful to see how the term walk of shame functions in popular culture. Writing in Cosmopolitan, Sarah Morrison describes the walk of shame: "What makes those slinks back to safety so totally unbearable is that most of the time, all we're dressed in is our skimpiest manhunt ensembles and last night's makeup. Hell, we might as well be wearing a sign that says 'I just came from a sexy sleepover.'" (3) American culture has a love/hate relationship with sexuality. We celebrate it, yet we keep it hidden and taboo. The walk of shame transgresses these norms and provides observers with a sexuality that is at once too manifest. Knowledge of the woman's sexual experience can no longer be denied by the observer; everyone recognizes what her appearance reveals of her actions from the night before. As Laura Baron notes, "Everyone knows black, patent leather stilettos, jeans, and sequins isn't a morning jogging outfit." (4)

 
  Gina B. provides this account of the walk of shame: 
 
  I encountered my first Walk-of-Shamer in college. My suitemate, Miss 
  Bedhead, crept in at 6:30 A.M. looking like she'd been run over by a 
  truck. Her revealing party clothes that were sexy at midnight 
  would've gotten her arrested for streetwalking in the daylight. The 
  back of her bob was sticking straight up. Her lipstick was smeared 
  all over her chin, and a crusty trail of drool seemed indelibly 
  etched across her cheek. After she took a long shower and several 
  painkillers, we dragged Miss Bedhead to breakfast, where she inhaled 
  an abundance of coffee and absorbent carbs. She didn't have much to 
  say, except: "I can't believe I hooked up with him!!" Personally, I 
  had no problem with the hookup--I couldn't believe she actually 
  walked around on campus looking like that. (5) 

This account exposes two very different kinds of concerns. On the one hand, Miss Bedhead expresses remorse over an unplanned one night stand. Although it is not explicitly mentioned, it is implied that alcohol played a major role in this encounter. Miss Bedhead may have other concerns on her mind as well if the sex was unprotected. A study by Karen Ingersoll et al. notes that college aged women often tend to use contraception ...