I spent a great chunk of the weekend working on a four-page spread for the Slut issue. It’s about dichotomies and binaries. Partly because it is my gut reaction to turn every issue into a dichotomy, but also because I think dichotomies are pertinent to the idea of sluts. That is, I believe that to an extent, a Madonna/Whore mentality still guides the way society thinks about women.

That is what I’m trying to get at with this project: times when women have felt forced to pick Side A or Side B, when neither option is very appealing. Not too many women want to be sluts, but not too many want to be goody two-shoes, either. But finding the balance between can prove really tricky.

For a celebrity example, consider the incomparable Ms. Spears. In 1999, at age 17, Britney Spears posed on the cover of rolling stone, in polka-dot underwear, clutching a stuffed Teletubby. Several executives half-jokingly called the image “child pornography.” This is what American loved about Britney back then: that she was overtly sexual, but still young enough to feign an underage innocence to all of it.

But then she got crazy and fat and shaved her head. Here’s what a Rolling Stone article from last February had to say about the change:

She is not book-smart, granted. But she is intelligent enough to understand what the world wanted of her: that she was created as a virgin to be deflowered before us, for our amusement and titillation. She is not ashamed of her new persona — she wants us to know what we did to her.

I love Britney for going crazy—for not trying to hang onto that bizarre show business brand of innocence. I love her for exposing her ass in a half dozen supermarkets. It’s like she wanted to prove how stupid the whole charade was by rubbing it in everyone’s faces.

Perhaps the best way to fight stereotypes is to have a sense of humor, and embrace them. Here’s a quote from John Waters, one of the greatest directors of all time:

In “Cry-Baby,” porn star Traci Lords played a sexpot—which is always the best way to rid yourself of an image, by playing it and making fun of it.

Traci Lords, for those unfamiliar with the porn world, was another virgin to be deflowered. She was a pornstar who gained notoriety when it was discovered that she was underage in her early films (she was 15 when she made her first). She was eventually arrested for this, but sold Traci, I Love You, a porn film made just after she turned 18, for $100,000.

Who’s slutty? Britney and Traci, or America? That is, the underage girl on the cover, or the people who gaped at her?

I am asking all of you, then, to think of times when you have found expectations of women to be hypocritical bullshit—on the Madonna side as well as the Whore side.

There’s a lot I am still figuring out about my project, but one thing I know is that it’s about embracing insults.

My door is certainly embracing them!