Slut Shaming / Live-Action TV

• Accused (2023): In "Brenda's Story", after learning Brenda's promiscuous history, and that she'd had consensual sex with her rapist previously, the prosecutor on her case decides to not charge him as he says she'd make a bad victim. Brenda angrily claims he's bought into this. Though he denies the accusation, it's clear that at least he thinks enough jurors will that they couldn't obtain a conviction.
• In Agent Carter, the series doesn't shy away from a realistic display of mid-twentieth century attitudes about women and sex.
  • Everyone in Peggy Carter's office assumes she's only there because she was Captain America's lover, and tailor their ridicule accordingly— in reality, it was the other way around: Steve Rogers couldn't have pulled off his reputation-making mission if Peggy hadn't been there to encourage him and iron out the logistics. What's more, when they find out she's working with the fugitive Howard Stark, they all assume she's doing it because they're having an affair, and not for money or friendship.
  • Her landlady maintains a "home for respectable women" and doesn't just kick a girl out for having a boyfriend "above the first floor", she kicks her out in front of everyone at breakfast.
  • Howard is considered The Casanova by most for his many girlfriends, but ultimately it serves to get him in trouble, as the first season's plot turns out to have been kicked off by Howard showing off his secret weapons vault to a date who was actually a Russian spy. Several of his jilted girlfriends point out that any woman who went through as many partners as he has would be called a floozy.
• This attitude forms a big part of the conflict in Apple Tree Yard. The whole reason Yvonne doesn't report her rape to the police is because she knows it will be revealed she's been cheating on her husband, and she thinks the cops and anyone else who finds out will blame her or think she's lying about the rape. This culminates in Mark killing her rapist after Yvonne asked Mark to make George leave her alone, resulting in their arrest. Yvonne continues to hide the affair until she's forced to come clean when Mark admits to it; she then has to deal with being asked invasive questions about her sex life and how it relates to the rape. The narrative takes the stance that regardless of the cheating or anything else regarding a victim's sexual history, no one deserves to be raped or blamed for their assault. Luckily, the jury takes this stance too, showing compassion for Yvonne and only finding her guilty of perjury.
• Avocado Toast: Molly is very disapproving of her mom having an open marriage with her dad. Elle is not happy with her mom cheating and dating a man around Elle's age as well. Both moms call them on this.
• In the first season of Battlestar Galactica (2003), after having a one-night stand with Gaius Baltar, Starbuck gets thoroughly shamed by Apollo. The subtext makes it clear that it's because he's totally in love with her, but it takes the form of attacking her for promiscuity.
• The Beauty Queen Of Jerusalem:
  • Matilda is derided as "the Brits' whore" for dating at least one British officer, though it's ambiguous if she actually had sex with any of her boyfriends.
  • David brings up Luna having premarital sex as an excuse for becoming a Crazy Jealous Guy and beating her.
• Becoming Elizabeth: Before any rumors even start about her, Elizabeth must deal with people questioning her virtue simply based on her long-deceased mother's reputation. Then, when rumor swirl about Elizabeth's relationship with Thomas Seymour, various slut shamers become emboldened. Even Jane Grey gets in on it, calling Elizabeth a whore to her face.
• Beverly Hills, 90210. All of the girls do this to each other at varying intervals:
  • Brenda taunts Kelly about her previous reputation as the school bimbo after running into Kelly on a date with her ex-boyfriend Dylan. Throughout the series, it was well established that this was a sore point for Kelly.
  • Brenda herself gets this when she's wrongly accused of using the Casting Couch to secure the lead in the school play.
  • They, along with Andrea and Donna, apply this to newcomer Emily Valentine, upon noticing her flirting with all of the guys in the group. Especially bad as that's ALL she's doing—despite her unconventional looks and "Bad Girl" attitude, Emily is just as virginal as the latter two.
    • Emily herself accuses Brandon of treating her like a tramp after he breaks up with her even though he's actually done nothing of the sort—although he's (rightfully) complained about her crazy behavior, he's said nothing to indicate that she's promiscuous.
  • Valerie gets this after coming to town — from Kelly.
• Big Sky: Ronald and particularly Legarski hate "immoral" women, whom they target to sex traffic (usually the ones who are sex workers or otherwise already vulnerable).
• Bones:
  • Ordinarily, Bones is quite sex-positive. However, in the first episode of the fourth season, when a victim's father described her as a very good girl, Bones said "Not all the time" and showed him a tabloid rag with his daughter (a wealthy heiress) topless on the front page.
  • A few episodes later, she's dating two men at once, one with a purely physical connection, the other purely mental. Booth spends a significant amount of time attacking her for it. However, the show itself only calls her out on the fact that she was deliberately hiding the other relationship from each man. Then they accidentally run into each other at a restaurant and each man is hurt, the one for Bones thinking he's a beautiful idiot, the other for the exact opposite reason.
• Boy Meets World: Gender inverted. A girl goes out with Shawn and spends the entire evening making out with him before blowing off his offer of a second date. The next day, she goes out with Cory and doesn't kiss him once, but asks to see him again, as she wants to take things slow and be serious. When Shawn questions her on this, she bluntly tells him that she might actually consider Cory as a potential boyfriend because he's a "nice boy", whereas Shawn is only good for casual fun and only gets dates from so many girls because he's good-looking and has a reputation for being easy.
• While the exact word isn't used, Eleanor Bramwell gets this from her father after he learns that she had a romantic weekend with her boyfriend — a major taboo in the Victorian England setting of the series. Later in the series, her fiance (a different man), does the same thing after she admits that she cheated on him.
• Buffyverse:
  • Angel punished Cordelia for one-night stands (with two mystical pregnancies, no less). However, characters tended to be more concerned with whether or not someone was having sex with Angel and unleashing his evil alter-ego. In one of the cases, Cordelia suffers a Heroic BSoD over waking up magically pregnant and numbly says that she's "being punished". Wesley insists that she isn't. He and Angel direct their anger over what happened to Cordelia and several other women towards the human men who knowingly made a deal with a demon to knock up unsuspecting women with said demon's spawn.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Buffy doesn't have too many partners in her seven years on television — four, to be exact. Still, the show has a strong tendency to punish her for having sex, although the other characters really don't.
    • After Buffy sleeps with Angel, he loses his soul and turns back into the demonic Angelus, playing the Hellmouth version of "I've slept with my boyfriend and now he's acting different". Punished by the show, nothing but love from her family.
      Buffy: [crying] You must be so disappointed in me.
      Giles: No, no I'm not.
      Buffy: This is all my fault.
      Giles: No, I don't believe it is. Do you want me to wag my finger at you and tell you that you acted rashly? You did, and I can. I know that you loved him. And he... has proven more than once that he loved you. You couldn't have known what would happen. The coming months are going to be hard... I suspect on all of us. But... if it's guilt you're looking for, Buffy, I'm not your man. All you will get from me is my support... and my respect.
    • After she sleeps with Parker, the situation is played quite a bit more normally, with him just not calling her afterward, and she got a lot of Slut-Shaming from Spike, who was happy to taunt her for youthful naiveté. And try to kill her.
    • After she sleeps with Spike, Buffy really hates herself (she had a lot going on, and he was just the cherry on the shitstorm sundae). At one point she cries in Tara's lap, begging not to be forgiven. Spike thoroughly humiliates her. Of course, he is a soulless, "evil" vampire. Yet even he tires of the casual sex before long, considering it to be more base than loving sex, and turns Buffy out unless she agrees to make love properly. Wow.
    • The season 2 episode "Go Fish" tackled Slut-Shaming in a way that was ahead of its time in many ways. The principal, swim coach and swimmers all accuse Buffy of wearing provocative clothing that is tempting the guys in school. When facing possible gang rape by fish monsters, she makes a comment about what that will do to her damaged reputation in school.
    • Xander is always punished for having or wanting to have sex, by the discovery that his partners are evil or amoral demons, mummies, giant bugs... Even Anya, his long-term love interest, is arguably a form of this. Ironically, Xander is not one to shy away from making Slut-Shaming comments towards others, especially in the first three seasons, where Cordelia gets the brunt of them during their frequent sniping at one another.
    • Playing fast and loose with men is one of the reasons Faith is treated as evil, bad and just plain wrong. Part of her step over the Moral Event Horizon is establishing she is not an Ethical Slut, but rather somebody who uses other people for sex and discards them without regard for their feelings (or life in Xander's case). In her introduction scene, the first name she is referred to (by Cordelia) is Slut-orama.
    • In the season 8 comics, Dawn's ex-boyfriend Kenny (a thricewise) put a curse on her when he found out she cheated on him with his roommate.
• Burden of Truth: This is a go-to legal strategy for attacking female witnesses' credibility on the show, in one case even just being a lingerie model. Note that even the good guys use this.
• As the most active member of the team, the eponymous Castle is the only one who really could be shamed, and his partner, Kate Beckett, is usually happy to do so. She's also more than willing to shame any suspects of the week she disapproves of.
• In Charite, playing in late 19th century Germany, young theatre actress Hedwig Freiberg has to go through this after her affair with the renowned Robert Koch, a married man thirty years her senior, becomes public knowledge. She's booed on stage and loses her job because "[her] loose morals aren't acceptable". She gets better: Koch divorces his wife and marries her instead.
• Chuck's Sarah Walker frequently uses her body to get information, get past guards, and so on. This makes Chuck (entirely smitten) jealous and uncomfortable, and he occasionally attacks her for it. The one episode where Chuck is the one who is required to seduce a female arms dealer, they have to bring in an experienced spy to train him (Casey can't because he actually failed that part of his training). Meanwhile, Sarah's main concern is that he doesn't get himself killed rather than this trope.
• Community:
  • Inverted by Annie Edison. During the school's sexuality fair, it's revealed she's never seen a penis and everyone tries their best to make her comfortable about the word and the object, but she's proud to be uncomfortable about, thank you!
  • It's also gender-inverted by Jeff and Britta. Both of them are shown to be quite promiscuous, but Jeff is more shamed for this than Britta. ^note See: Alternate Aesop Interpretation. Britta is sometimes judged by the extremely Christian Shirley and extremely sexist Pierce, but the rest of the study group are non-judgemental about it.
  • In season 3, Pierce and Shirley use Britta's "free spirit" as part of a Batman Gambit to get the humanized Subway out of their school. They subtly tell Britta to fuck Subway every which way because she is a "liberal-minded person" and comment constantly on her promiscuity.
  • Furthermore there is a Running Gag in season 3 where Pierce continuously implies Britta is a prostitute.
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton: Frannie resorting to prostitution so she could survive after Benham fires her is used at her trial painting her as an immoral person who would commit murder too.
• Conviction (2016): The victim in the second episode was afraid of this if people knew she'd had casual sex with a married co-worker earlier on the night of her attack, and thus didn't mention it. Unfortunately this helped to get some innocent men convicted, as the physical evidence was thought to be from rape. Afterward her fears are proved correct as the media hounds her about this, despite Hayes's attempt to stop it.
• Cougar Town loves to take the piss out of Lorie for being kinda slutty. The show really, really loves to give Grayson shit. In the third season, Lorie and Ellie get in argument over who's sexier and have to settle it by finding someone they've both slept with. Travis goes through their lists (multiple pages each), finds one person they've both slept with, then calls them both ho's.
• Dark Desire: Alma mentions that women viewed as promiscuous have far less sympathy as murder victims in her class. The detective investigating Brenda's death remarks on her apparent promiscuity as well, and a female colleague rebukes him for a perceived attitude like this, but he dismisses it.
• Doc Martin: After the surprise pregnancy, both Ellingham and Louisa get some guff. He for not doing the right thing and marrying her, her for having had sex and being Defiled Forever. Her pregnancy cost her a job in London, and the town pharmacist is snippy about it due to her own crush on Ellingham.
• The first season of Dollhouse gives us the anonymous client "Miss Lonelyheart", an octogenarian who frequently contracts the use of the doll Victor, and who is mocked by the staff of the house for it. It turns out the octogenarian is a decoy and the real client is Adele.
• Downton Abbey:
  • The first season shows a young lady of the upper class having a disastrous one-night stand (he dies in the act). Her mother is shocked and disgusted, and her reputation suffers immeasurably when the rumor spreads to London. Everyone involved, including the young woman herself, treats it as though she had willingly seduced the man, although from the point of view of a modern audience she offered only Questionable Consent at best and was sexually assaulted at worst. Subverted when she finally tells Matthew. While he's shaken at first, he tells her he doesn't forgive her, because he doesn't believe she did anything wrong.
  • Its second season gives us Ethel, a new maid brought in during the war, as Downton is converted into an adjunct of the hospital to help with injured, convalescing veterans. Ethel loves a man in uniform, literally. She's caught in the act by the head housemaid, and is sacked without notice and without references. When she winds up pregnant, the same head is sympathetic, and still helps as much as she can, even trying to shame the officer who got her pregnant (and who rebuffs the attempt).
  • In the fourth season, Edith fears this happening to her if she keeps her illegitimate baby (which was conceived with a man she loves and would be married to, if not for a legal issue he was in the process of working out when he disappeared). Her aunt tries to talk her out of an abortion on the grounds that Edith seems unable to cope with it and that it would be potentially dangerous to her health. In the end, Edith keeps the baby, but decides to have it secretly raised by a worker on the estate, who owes the family a favor.
  • Mary spends a weekend with a suitor in a hotel and now has second thoughts about accepting his marriage proposal. Her grandmother shames her, pointing out that such behavior is unacceptable for a young woman of her status. Except, Mary is a widow, and widows have always had far greater leeway than unmarried young women, as long as they were discreet.
• Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman:
  • The revelation that a white woman rescued from a Native American camp actually married one of them results in basically the entire town doing a 180 on their treatment of her—initially incredibly sympathetic and concerned for her, they all turn out as Dr. Quinn and her family try to take her to church, declaring "that Injun' whore isn't welcome here."
  • This even happens to Dr. Quinn herself. When her foster children's natural father comes to town to fight her for custody, he puts a spin on her romantic entanglements by pointing out that within one calendar year, she was engaged to three different men (only one of which, to Sully, was legitimate. The first being a misunderstanding from her brief courtship with the Reverend, and the other being the result of her presumed-dead fiance still being alive), and trying to make her relationship with Sully himself seem improper.
• ER: Gender inverted. Doug Ross' womanizing behavior was rarely, if ever, seen as positive. At best, it was a source of ridicule, at worst—after he brought in one of his random nameless one-night-stands dying from a drug overdose—outright contempt and disgust, and overall, indicative of him being a very troubled individual. His Suspiciously Similar Substitute Luka Kovac had an equally similar story arc.
• Euphoria: A frequent topic of discussion on this series. In the first episode, Cassie's nude photos become distributed, and the guys all assume that she's some kind of sex fiend, when in reality she's no more sexually active than any of the other girls. In the second episode, Kat has to deal with the fallout from footage of her having sex being put online.
• In the first series of The Fall (2013), several PSNI officers try to shame SIO Gibson about her one night stand with a married detective. She shuts them both down, hard. She didn't know he was married and feels no shame whatever about a one night stand.
• Firefly:
  • In the episode "Shindig", a gentleman named Murphy gallantly comes to Kaylee's defense when the latter is being snarked at by some rich women... by insulting the ringleader for her "easiness":
  Murphy: Why, Banning Miller! What a vision you are in your fine dress. It must have taken a dozen slaves a dozen days to get you into that getup. 'Course, your daddy tells me it takes the space of a schoolboy's wink to get you out of it again.
  • In the same episode, this is basically the reason that Mal ended up in an Honor Duel with Atherton Wing after he punched the man for dismissing Inara as a whore; Mal may dismiss Inara's career himself, but he draws a distinction as he only shows disrespect to Inara's profession where Atherton's words showed disrespect to Inara herself.
• Frasier: Dr. Nora, who Frasier hired believing she was sweet and timid, shows her true colors when she gets on the air and tells her first caller that she's a "whore" for having sex with a man she isn't married to. Frasier is horrified, but the show draws in enough ratings that the station manager refuses to fire her.
• A French Village: Frenchwomen known or suspected to have had sex with Germans get publicly denounced as sluts and whores (whether or not they were actually promiscuous).
• The pilot to Friends gives us Monica sleeping with a man on the first date. The show didn't make too much hay of it, but the executives were worried the public would blame her, so the producers polled the live audience. However, Phoebe wasn't made to feel bad for her sexual activity. Joey was given was only given a hard time for his rampant womanizing when he mistreated women.
• The George Lopez Show: Carmen gets this after a boy tells everyone he had sex with her. The bullying (from the girls) and sexual harassment (from the guys) gets so bad that her parents have to pull her out and enroll her in a private school.
• General Hospital: Betty Karen does this to Veronica Brenda, citing her flirtatious nature, In standing up for herself, pointing out she has slept with only one guy, Brenda ends up doing this to Karen, pointing out that Karen is the one who has spent several months flitting between two different guys. Karen also gets this from her ex-boyfriend Jason and his brother AJ following their breakup. They all have a serious Heel Realization several months later after learning that Karen was sexually abused as a child—and when she confronts him, her attacker does this too.
• Ginny and Georgia: Cynthia uses the fact Georgia is in a relationship with Mayor Paul Randolph out of wedlock and has two kids with different fathers as part of her campaign's personal attacks on him.
• Glee:
  • Gender-Inverted Sue shames Will for his interest in Emma while still technically married to his wife.
  • In the episode "Bad Reputation," Emma calls Will out for making out with Shelby and letting April sleep over. "You're a slut Will, you're a slut you're a slut..."
  • While practicing for their duet, Brittany carries Artie to her bed and divests him of his virginity. He breaks up with her the next day because it was less important to her than to him; he thought she was just using him for his voice (to win a competition) and that sex was part of that.
• In The Golden Girls, Blanche Devereaux is an Ethical Slut whose reputation as a man-chaser precedes her. This results in an enormous amount of snark from her roommates, especially the elderly Sophia, but most are good natured and not meant in malice. Blanche is actually very proud of her promiscuity and holds herself to the standard that she will never be a mistress and always practices safe sex.
  • In the early episode "The Triangle", Dorothy's boyfriend makes a pass at Blanche, but Dorothy refuses to believe her because she thinks that Blanche is jealous of their relationship and calls her a slut. This also happens when Dorothy thinks Blanche is sleeping with Stan (Dorothy's ex-husband) and doesn't believe Blanche when she says that she isn't.
  • When Rose's daughter, Bridget has a one-night stand with Dorothy's son, Michael, Dorothy initially directs her anger and embarrassment at her son. Eventually, she turns the blame onto Bridget for the incident. Rose doesn't react much better, bemoaning that her daughter's first time was a meaningless fling and then shutting down further when told that it wasn't Bridget's first time at all. With great effort, all parties come to terms with the fact that these are two mature adults who consented to have sex together.
  • When Blanche is photographed leaving a political candidate's home late at night, her friends refuse to believe that all they did was talk, especially when the politician declares he had an affair with Blanche at a press conference. They finally believe her when the guy admitted he lied, and that he's a post-op transsexual.
• Grey's Anatomy:
  • After Derek hears about Meredith having slept with George and dating Finn, he tells her she should hook up with Alex since he also likes to sleep around. Her response? She delivers her "You Don't Get To Call Me a Whore" speech.
  • A patient who hears about Derek's affair with Meredith starts acting like a jerk to her. Derek's wife Addison tells her to stop and that Meredith didn't do anything wrong.
  • Izzie also gets this when Alex finds out that she used to be a lingerie model. Izzie refuses to feel ashamed about it, saying it helped get her through med school and she was the only intern there who wasn't in financial debt because of it.
  • Alex sleeping with his interns and having only one night stands in season 9 is treated as proof that he hasn't grown up since everyone else is settling down.
  • April does this to herself in season 9. After losing her virginity before marriage, she feels extremely guilty and like she's a bad person, even though everyone else tells her that's not the case.
    • Of course, the real reason for her guilt is because she enjoyed it so much.
    • Later, she meets a nice EMT, who tells her that he's saving himself for marriage. She lies that she's also a virgin. Later, she admits the truth, when she finds out that he doesn't care if she's a virgin, only for him to leave because she lied to him.
  • Early on, after Sloan has been there for a while, Dr. Bailey gathers him and all of the female doctors and nurses, points to Sloan, and says, "This man is a whore!" She then explains why the women shouldn't expect more from him than they're getting. (Imagine that one gender-swapped.)
• The Handmaid's Tale:
  • As part of the Handmaids' training, they have the group shame a young woman who was gang-raped, as she supposedly "led them on". This is particularly poignant since Offred is mentioned as writing about sexual assault before in a flashback.
  • In "Testimony" Fred's defense lawyer tries to impeach June's testimony through citing the fact she'd had an affair with Luke while he was married to another woman, saying it shows she's got a past history of sexual impropriety. This is not uncommon for rape cases, even in spite of laws preventing a victim's former sexual conduct or history from being introduced, as lawyers still find ways around that fairly often (or if not them, the media does).
• One episode of Have I Got News for You had Guest Host Alexander Armstrong call an MP "a bit of a shagger" and a Femme Fatale Russian spy "a bit of a slag". The rest of the panel was quick to call him out on this.
• Horatio Hornblower: Katherine Cobham (posing as Duchess of Wharfedale as a guest in Spanish prison) sleeps with a French soldier who recognized her, pulling off a Honey Trap — she does it to save herself and Hornblower from espionage charges and the Admiralty's dispatches that she's hiding. On the next day, Hornblower is considerably colder to her and perhaps a tad jealous. She makes it clear that she doesn't like being treated this way, but she herself feels the shame in the situation.
  "Your lack of civility does you no credit, sir. (...) I did what was necessary to preserve my alias. So I sacrificed some small insignificant things — such as my pride and my self-respect."
• House, M.D.:
  • Greg House MD, in his never-ending quest to piss off absolutely everyone in existence, did this a lot. In the early seasons, he wouldn't shut up with harassing any woman who shows even a mild sign of being attractive, for being attractive, bouncing back and forth between calling it unprofessional and just sexually harassing them with words.
  • In the sixth season, a patient of the week is a porn star, as is his wife, and he's quite proud of his job. Cameron spends the entire episode attacking him for it, and even compares him negatively to someone who committed murder... because the murderer feels bad about it.
• How I Met Your Mother plays this straight, inverts it, and averts it.
  • Barney is a serial-user man-whore, and his friends tend to treat him as weird more often than heroic. When Barney reveals he has slept with 200 women, they're all disgusted by it.
    Ted: You should be proud. You should be tested, but you should be proud.
  • Lily is Marshall's My Girl Is a Slut, with the pair of them having an incredibly active sex life, but Marshall makes a huge fuss about the possibility that he wasn't the one to take her virginity. At the same time, part of his problem was that he gave her his, and the revelation that they might not have lost it to each other "rewrites their history."
  • Ted's generally after true love and not one-night stands. When he does have one-night stands, the response is varied, from treating it as a trivial detail ("The Pineapple Incident"), to heroic ("The Third Wheel"), to despicable ("No Tomorrow").
  • Robin has fewer conquests than Ted, but she's had a one night stand with Mitch, inventor of The Naked Man!. After the gang spends a few minutes admiring Mitch's ingenuity, Marshall says, "I call slut!" Robin spends the majority of the episode trying to justify what she did so she doesn't feel bad, but Marshall ends up taking back the slut comment after Lily successfully uses the Naked Woman on him, showing that he's Not So Above It All.
  • The various women that sleep with Barney are usually referred to by other characters as sluts, skanks, hoes etc. The episode "Say Cheese" similarly has Lily making a game of naming Ted's "random skanks" that he keeps bringing to important events, not realizing the irony that all the girls have in common is having dated Ted.
• Impeachment covers how misogynistic the 1990s media was towards to Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones, even shaming them as bimbos or negatively picking their looks apart (either criticizing Paula's large nose or Monica's weight) all despite the fact that a. Jones was alleging that Bill Clinton sexually harassed her, b. Monica is a very young intern in a relationship with an older man who is the president and despite her consent, it's an abuse of power, c. Monica's own freedom is on the line because of Ken Starr and his Moral Guardian ilk being willing to imprison her for lying about the relationship, d. The previous relationship with the married Andy Blier started when she was Sixteen years old, hence making him a groomer and calling to question his fitness to work with teenagers. In the end Bill Clinton goes on with his life while Paula and Monica have to use their ill-gotten celebrity to make money as they are considered unemployable and struggle with trauma.
• Virginia from It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling... is always taking cracks at Samantha's need for constant sex. For example, in "A New Lease":
  Pudding: Will you lend us some of your coffee?
  Virginia: No.
  Pudding: Samantha needs it.
  Virginia: Samantha always needs it.
• Alba from Jane the Virgin is very old-fashioned and religious, and opens the series firmly lecturing her granddaughter Jane about saving herself for marriage, comparing losing her virginity to crumpling up a flower — once it's done, there's no going back. While Alba is an overall good grandparent and sympathetic character, and Jane takes the lesson to heart, her views on sex are presented as being outdated, and Jane clearly has some issues relating to her sexuality. (Though she fortunately realizes on a logical level that a woman's choice to have sex doesn't define her character, and it's nobody else's business.) Alba also has a nasty habit of slut-shaming her daughter Xo, which really gets on the latter's nerves. Then we find out Alba herself wasn't a virgin when she got married. When Xo finds out, she's understandably furious, calling Alba a hypocrite — something even Jane is forced to agree with. It gets a little more understandable when Alba reveals that while her husband didn't care that she wasn't a virgin, she was treated like a whore in her hometown, and her family basically disowned her when they found out.
• Law & Order and its spin-offs provide a realistic treatment. One of the problems the prosecutors often face is that while they're trying the defendant, the defense is trying the victim. Once a victim is shown to have had sex with more than one person, it becomes a concern that the jury will assume she deserved murder or rape. However, the show portrays the female targets of slut-shaming as innocent victims of unwarranted harassment. Promiscuous men, on the other hand, are treated as though they must be guilty of something by detectives (especially Benson and Stabler). Even when they don't turn out to be guilty of a crime, promiscuous men are never portrayed positively.
• A second-season episode of Lie to Me deals with the search for an eighteen year old who ran away from home and started doing porn. She spends some time hating herself for what she's done, calling herself toxic and asking "Who would want... someone like me?" Her father is also a piece of work.
• Surprisingly, given that the show's main character Bo is a succubus and a Sex Goddess, Lost Girl didn't deal with any Slut-Shaming, meta- or in the show, until near the end of the first season, when the Monster of the Week was one that fed off sexual shame and drove its victims to suicide after covering their homes with graffiti-like "SLUT", "DIRTY WHORE", and "SKANK". This bad guy's species is the natural enemy of succubi.
• Lost in Austen: Darcy shames Amanda when he discovers she's previously lived with another man (although he is not aware that she's from the 21st century), emphatically stating that he cannot marry a woman who is "not a maid". Lydia elopes with Bingley rather than Wickham (see Literature below for Pride and Prejudice), but they avoid scandal when they admit nothing sexual happened between them. Jane ultimately annuls her marriage to Collins so she can be with Bingley, but her reputation is so damaged that they move to America. Wickham and the Darcys agree to pretend that Wickham raped Georgiana so she will be saved the shame from having made advances towards him.
• Mad Men, thanks to Values Dissonance, has the Double Standard in full effect. The men are free to romp, so long as they're discreet, and other men don't particularly care, but if a woman steps toe over the line, she's torn apart. Peggy Olson gets it particularly bad from her family and her priest for having a baby out of wedlock.
• Midsomer Murders:
  • "A Sacred Trust" involves some romantic liaisons, including one girl shamed for her involvement with a jock.
  • In "Schooled in Murder", Debbie's daughter, Holly, was about to be expelled from school, as she was on a scholarship from her mother's employer, but the scholarship contained "moral terms" which Debbie had broken by having an affair.
• Mrs. America: When Jill (as one Republican to another) talks to Phyllis about how defending gender roles and putting down women's rights won't make her male colleagues respect her and even then it's nothing compared to the sexual harassment faced by the secretaries on the Hill, Phyllis makes a comment about "those women are inviting it" and respectable women hardly get compromised like that. Jill decides to call her out, pointing out that those women are the same as them and could even be like them and they just want a fair shake and go to work with no issues.
• My Left Nut: Alongside the rumors that Mick has a Gag Penis comes the one Rachael found out by giving him a blowjob in the parking lot during the Double Date, which didn't happen. Rachael gets shamed by the other studies for being an "easy whore" and is terribly hurt because she thinks it was Mick who spread the rumors. She ends up forgiving him later when she realizes it was probably a case of Gossip Evolution caused by Siobhan.
• NOS4A2: Manx is extreme about this, viewing all mothers who have sex outside marriage to be unfit, no matter how good they actually are with their kids. He kidnaps their kids as a result, taking them away into his domain.
• In the second season of Chinese drama Ode to Joy, Ying Ying's brief relationship with her manipulative manager in the first season comes back to haunt her when introducing her new boyfriend to her friends. Some good-natured teasing from Xiao Xiao towards Guan Ju Er over being the only virgin in the room inadvertently reveals that Ying Ying is not a virgin, which results in her boyfriend dumping her and his mother disparaging her character. However, everybody else considers this sort of attitude beyond old-fashioned and misogynistic.
• On Once Upon a Time, after David and Mary Margaret's affair is revealed to Storybrooke, Mary Margaret is shunned for a couple episodes. She gets the worst of it from Regina, who has a vested interest in making Mary Margaret miserable.
• The Practice: In "Civil Right" Eugene attacks an alleged rape victim's testimony by pointing to what she wore on the night of her date with his client, implying that as she was in a revealing dress, she was "asking for it." This appears to be Eugene's go-to strategy when defending clients in rape cases, as we see him utilize the same tactics with another case near the end. He gets rebuked publicly for it by the victim, and the judge finds this all disgusting (though he can't stop such questions) and Eugene feels terrible about doing so. However, he keeps doing it in defense of his client.
• Promised Land (1996). Dinah Greene is assaulted when walking home late from her hospital job. When confronted by her would-be rapist a few days later, she pleads for mercy, asking how he would feel if someone were attacking his own daughters like this. He angrily declares, "My daughters are good, decent girls! They don't go walking around late at night!", insinuating that Dinah deserved to be assaulted because of her behavior.
• A first season episode of Psych has Shawn and Gus acting as legal consultants to a murder trial, for the defense. As the defendant had sex with the victim the night of the murder, the prosecution and media attack her for that. As he slept around a lot^note And was murdered by a jealous secretary he never slept with, the defense ends up attacking him for that.
• Quantum Leap:
  • The 1990 episode "Another Mother" has the leapee's teenage son's friends making fun of a girl named Jackie behind her back for supposedly being easy. Kevin, the teenage son in question, defends Jackie to his friends, leading to the events of the plot where his friends conspire to Virgin Shame and embarrass him.
  • The 1991 episode "Raped," where Sam leaps into the body of a young woman, Katie McBain, who was raped by her boyfriend, the town's football hero Kevin Wentworth. Katie is already being slut-shamed and getting even darker threats as her assailant is ready to stand trial, and things get worse when he is completely acquitted. (In the original timeline, Katie is so shamed she leaves town and never returns, not even to attend her father's funeral, knowing that people will remember her for "unjustly" accusing a "wholesome young boy" for rape.) Sam, however, more than avenges Katie's ordeal when Kevin comes to the McBain house one night and tries to get at her one last time... and while it may not completely erase Katie's unwanted reputation, it will ensure that Kevin's other victims — Word of God says he had several — will now have the courage to come forward and take a stand against date rape.
• Queen Sugar:
  • When Melina accuses Davis and his basketball teammates of gang-rape, many people don't believe her and accuse her of just trying to get money out of them. Then, she produces a voicemail from Davis, not only confirming that the rape did occur, but also that Davis had been carrying out a long-term affair with her, during which he verbally and sexually abused her. As soon as Charley, Davis' wife, hears the voicemail, she has a Jerkass Realization and apologizes to Melina.
  • Jimmy sexually assaulted Billie when she was eighteen and bragged about how good she was in bed. Since he was still married to Violet back then, Billie was labeled a homewrecker and no one believed her when she said it wasn't her choice. Ernest was the only person who treated her well after that. Billie's own mother blamed her for the assault because of the way she dressed and acted. Billie couldn't even bring herself to tell her father what really happened.
• Riverdale: In "Body Double", Jerk Jock Chuck slut shames Veronica after their date, via an edited photo suggesting something sexual between them happened, while in truth nothing did. Veronica soon discovers that this actually happens to several girls at school by other Jerk Jocks, as she discovers all of them keep a list where they "rate" every girl they dated, called a playbook. Cheryl is particularly shocked when she learns even her deceased brother Jason took part in it.
• Scrubs tended to treat characters badly if they had sex outside of a committed relationship. Men were ostensibly excused if it had been long enough, but they were portrayed (and treated) as somewhat pathetic.
  • Played With in a first season episode where Elliot has a one-night stand with a surgeon who turns out to be a jerk, telling everyone the juicy details and bragging about his conquest. At first she's mortified (and feels betrayed because Turk joins in with a few comments about how nice her butt is), but she ends up deciding that she likes at least being known around the hospital where she was previously invisible to everybody (plus it's so far off from her actual personality that it doesn't bother or shame her much).
  Elliot: (proudly) "I'm Elliot Reed... SLUT!"
  • Often played with from J.D. When catching up with a college friend, he proudly brags about having had sex with a girl "on a pile of coats with dozens of people watching. What a whore!" Or when Jordan tells J.D. and Kim about her abortion:
    Jordan: It was when I was working as a waitress on Nantucket. I was dating this guy named Kevin. He had the most beautiful blue eyes; they were either sky blue, or powder blue, I could never decide which. Anyway, his best friend knocked me up. [Beat] Don't look at me like that; it was my first time.
    J.D.: Oh, we're not judging. [thinking: Whore!]
  • Denise in the eighth season starts sleeping with Derek and calls herself a ho-bag. Ultimately subverted, as Elliot tries to reassure her.
    Denise: I don't know why I keep jumping into bed with him. My confidence is shot from screwing up that spinal tap last week, and then yesterday I misdiagnosed an ectopic pregnancy. I don't know, maybe I wanted to do something I knew I could do right, like bangin' a dude. I'm a giant ho-bag.
    Elliot: No, no you are not. So, is Derek a good guy?
    Denise: Derek? I thought it was Erik.
    • There's also a Running Gag that has her sleeping with random fat guys, and being somewhat ashamed by it. It's Played for Laughs, though.
• In the second season of Scandal, Pope's team are investigating a missing girl and as soon as it becomes clear that she was the anonymous blogger outing the sexual prowess (or lack thereof) of various members of the DC power elite, one declares, "Oh boy; let the Slut-Shaming begin." As far as some news outlets are concerned, this isn't a missing girl, but a missing whore.
• A Downplayed and more realistic example on Selfie, co-workers are gossiping about scantily-clad Eliza, who is seen flirting with another coworker. They criticize her revealing clothes, and one suggests she sleeps around to avoid being reprimanded by HR, and to increase her sales (she is the company's top-seller, which even she admits is based on sex appeal). Henry informs her she has to consider how she's perceived by other people, thinking they might get the wrong idea that she's sleeping with the guy she was flirting with. Eliza informs him she is sleeping with him, and has been for two and a half weeks. Henry is shocked by the short time-frame, and Eliza tells him not to get all "Slut-Shamey" on her.
• In the "A Study in Pink" episode of Sherlock, Holmes uses his Sherlock Scan to humiliate Donovan and Anderson by blatantly stating that they were sleeping with each other. In this case, the fact that Anderson was married was the main source of shame.
• Seinfeld
  • This happens to Elaine in the Grand Finale when one of the many character witnesses against them testifies about her coming into his drugstore to buy out the entire supply of contraceptive sponges. His disgusted tone and the shocked reaction from the courtroom is clearly meant to convey that Elaine is promiscuous. Ironically, not only was she not, but even if she had been, her desperate need to conserve the sponges made her LESS inclined to sleep around, as evidenced by the ridiculous interview/screening process she put a potential lover through.
  • In an earlier episode, when she asks a coworker about why she's so averse to using or touching anything that she herself has used, the woman admits "You seem to be with a lot of men. . ." Elaine angrily and rightly tells her that aside from her attitude being offensive and ignorant, her personal life is none of the woman's business. The woman agrees it isn't, but she's shown to be a germaphobe and irrational about this.
• Sex/Life: Billie, after separating from Cooper, gets disparaged over seeing someone else by her mom. It turns out that Billie's dealt with this for years, saying her mom taught her to feel shame over her sexual desires, something that led her into dishonesty as she repressed them. She calls her mom out for this. Her mom though apologizes for this, relating that she had been branded a slut herself long ago after she'd gotten caught with her boyfriend, then tried to steer Billie away from this as she'd suffered for it.
• Sex and the City's Samantha occasionally got this, being the most promiscuous member of the group. In one episode, explicitly titled "Are We Sluts?", after her latest tryst lets a burglar into her apartment building, several of the other tenants blast her for her frequent and numerous guests—one woman disgustedly declares "Every time I see you in this elevator, you're with a different man", while another outright calls her a "tart". It gets so bad, she has to move out. In another episode, Carrie is shocked to walk into her office and find her giving oral sex to her delivery guy.
• She's Gotta Have It: Nola puts up street art denouncing the things she's been called and asserting her right to have sex with whomever she wishes, which is then defaced by someone else labeling her a slut, which upsets her deeply.
• Stargirl (2020): Yolanda suffered mockery and widespread shaming when a nude selfie that she'd sent to her boyfriend is leaked, not only from other kids but also her parents, who are Catholic. She loses both him and many friends over it.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Over the course of the final season, Worf had been struggling with the death of his wife Jadzia Dax, moreso after the Dax symbiont is passed on to Ezri. In "Penumbra," when Ezri and Worf find themselves stranded on a distant planet following a poorly thought out rescue plan driven by lingering feelings of affection for Worf, the two get into a bitter spat when Ezri lets slip that Jadzia had been with other men before him. Worf, who has some very conservative ideas about romantic relationships, takes it poorly and calls Ezri (and by proxy, Jadzia) a "sli'vak", the Klingonese word for "slut".
• Step by Step: In "It Didn't Happen One Night," Al nearly gets this reputation when a boy who took her out suggests that they had sex, and then she gets several date offers - all while a jealous Karen (Al's stepsister) hasn't had any boys ask her out and she doesn't understand why. Just before things fully reach this trope, however, Karen decides to defuse the situation by calling Al's date out and clearing up what really happened... and in the process, empowers several of his other previous dates to speak up and expose the boy as a smooth-talking fraud.
• An episode of Supernatural starts with this. A cheerleader is shamed during lunch at school for sleeping with a guy and even for her choice of position (after all, only a slut faces away from the guy during sex). It's never revealed if the rumors are true or not, but it does cause her to lash out at a random nerdy girl and subsequently get beat by the girl (possessed by a vengeful spirit) to death in the bathroom.
• In the third season of Ted Lasso, an old video of Keeley's gets hacked and leaked, leading to an episode-long aesop about how that's a really shitty thing and Keeley did nothing wrong. However, her girlfriend, though initially appearing supportive, attacks Keeley for it, dials back their relationship (not calling her her girlfriend, cancelling an outing with a family friend), calls it a porno, and leaves during an argument with the implication that the relationship might be over.
• That '70s Show:
  • This is what most of the jokes about Laurie Foreman boil down to. If she acts mean or nasty to her brother Eric or anyone else, they'll retort with a joke about how's she a whore. Because apparently her nastiness and her tendencies to sleep around are one and the same.
  • It wasn't just Laurie. Even though it was a show about teenagers in the swingin' Seventies most of the cast would make fun of their classmates for their alleged promiscuity. While it made sense coming from shallow vindictive Jerkass Jackie, it was hypocritical coming from self-proclaimed feminist Donna, or blatant anti-establishment Hyde, or Eric who was too much of a loser to judge anyone.
• True Blood:
  • In season 2, Bill slut-shames Jessica for her attire, claiming "I will not have you go out looking like a slattern." Considering that Bill is depicted as a misogynist and later shown to have treated sex workers terribly (one example being what he and Lorena did to Pam's girls at her brothel in 1905), this makes his comments towards Jessica downright disgusting.
  • In season 5, Hoyt joins up with a Hate Group after Jessica breaks up with him, and proceeds to slut-shame her to them, which prompts them to kidnap Jessica and bring her to Hoyt so he can have the opportunity to kill her.
• The Tunnel: After he learns she arranged to have casual sex with a man she'd met online, Jacques Moreau hits on Elise while they're in the car together (she's driving). She's none too pleased by this and orders him to Get Out! (in the middle of the street). Afterward, he doesn't see what the problem is, making clear that in his mind the very fact that she'd sleep with another man means Elise is a slut who'd surely go with him too (although he's much older and unattractive).
• Two Sentence Horror Stories: In "Crush" Jane insults Mabel as a slut for once being promiscuous in her youth.
• Underground (WGN): Clara gets pregnant and is forced to have an abortion by Hicks, the baby's father. The leaders of the community force her to sit in front of everyone while they scream at her to name the father, claiming that it's for her own good, and losing the baby was punishment for them sinning (they think she miscarried).
• Vida: Marisol gets this after Tlaloc records her giving him oral sex and shares it without her knowing. She is the one blamed by her dad, who kicks her out of the house, though he was indifferent to her brother Johnny cheating on his (pregnant) fiancée.
• 7 Yüz: In "Eşitlik", a sex tape turns Dilek into the victim of humiliating gossip and derision, the subject of tattle by both male and female acquaintances. Kaan's boss in particular makes his opinion of Dilek clear, despite going out of the way to watch the video himself.
• Yellowjackets: Natalie says she's been with a few guys after Travis asks as they get intimate, and gets angry when he doesn't like this. She points out that a guy at their school has been with many girls and no one cares. Travis claims it's different as she's a girl.
• War of the Worlds (2019): Chloe's rapist brother tries to excuse him raping her by saying she walked around wearing only her underwear and had often slept with many different boys.