Sep 12th, 2017, 11:27 PM

It's Time to Rename the Walk of Shame

By Lily Radziemski
Image Credit: Pexels/Tookapic
'The Walk of Triumph' has a nice ring to it.

The break of dawn strikes and shopkeepers begin to open their stores, traffic begins to swirl, the smell of morning coffee drifts through the streets. And then she’s spotted: the ‘walk of shame’. Messy hair, smudged makeup, barefoot and with heels in hand. Heads turn, and ‘the walk of shame’ travels by whisper through cafes and along sidewalks. Typically, this woman is associated with partying, drinking, and finally, the embarrassing regret of a ‘bad decision.’ 

For decades, feminists in America—and worldwide—have been fighting to dismantle traditional gender roles that often shame women who challenge them. The inauguration of the current President of the United States—also known as the man who bragged about ‘grabbing women by the pussy’—has unintentionally sparked a resurgence of the feminist movement, inspiring worldwide marches promoting women’s rights. However, despite the current spotlight on women’s empowerment, there is one phrase that remains ingrained in our conversations: the ‘walk of shame’.


Image Credit: Flickr/ Alisdare Hickson

There are a few major issues with this term. Firstly—and unsurprisingly—it does not apply to men. Undoubtedly, this reinforces the classic double standard that men who sleep with lots of women are cool ‘Casanovas,’ while women who sleep with lots of men are sluts. If a disheveled-looking man is walking home in the morning, passersbys likely wouldn’t blink an eye; as soon as it’s a woman, the whole street turns their heads in the assumption that she has committed a sinful act, stepping outside of her expected role of a Madonna. So much so that there has to be a name for it. Walk of shame. While for men, it’s just called walking home.

Where did this association come from? Upon closer look, it’s actually embedded in the foundation of America’s earliest legislation.

According to Dr. Joanne Sweeny’s Undead Statutes: The Rise, Fall, and Continuing Uses of Adultery and Fornication Criminal Laws, throughout the 1600s “in the Colonies, particularly New England, colonists equated crime with sin, and courts were seen as guardians of Biblical precepts.” Because of this, courts had actual power to incriminate anyone engaging in fornication (sex between two people that are not married to each other... i.e. an old term for casual sex) or adultery, and “fornication charges were the most frequent charges brought against women in New England in the 1600s.” Of course, it’s impossible to miss that even the legal system imposed more shame on women than men throughout America’s early years.

Interestingly enough, not all of these laws have been changed. According to Sweeny, since most Americans would now view these punishments as extreme, most of them remain intact but inactive; this means that they still exist, but people rarely bother to convict anyone under fornication or adultery. However, noted in James Brooke's Idaho County Dusts Off Fornication Law, “in 1996, an Idaho district attorney brought fornication charges against teenage girls and used these convictions to try to deter teenagers from having sex.” Out of ten couples, most of them plead guilty; following conviction, the couples were required to attend parenting classes while spending three years on probation. Therefore, even now, this association between sex and shame remains intact in the very legal system of America. 

The ‘walk of shame’ serves as a reminder that even though women are ‘allowed’ to have casual sex now, this doesn’t come without social consequences. Socially, women are still bound by societal shame in the realm of promiscuity dating back to America’s early years.

As a nation trying to combat growing forces of male dominance and other outdated power structures, it is important to begin to evolve how we communicate with each other. By continuing to use the phrase ‘walk of shame,’ women remain bounded by this false perception that sex is shameful, as it remains a subconscious association through language. It is now time to rename ‘the walk of shame’ to ‘the walk of triumph’ as a weapon against patriarchy.