The six wives of Henry VIII and 'slut-shaming'

DISGUSTING AS IT MAY BE, slut-shaming has transformed into an increasingly popular trend since 2012 with the help of social media. It’s exactly what it sounds like: targeting a woman for the way she dresses or alleged sexual liaisons.

Against the morality of slut-shaming, journalist Brandy Alexander writes in an article for The Gloss, “It’s not slutty if you don’t think it’s slutty.”

Many are quick to defend victimized teenage girls, hoping to prevent suicidal action, but who defends slut-shamed women dead almost five centuries? Or, 500 years passed, should such shameful harassment be tolerated?

Shockingly, the six most attacked women of history are Henry VIII’s wives, from the most maligned of them, Anne Boleyn, a ‘husband-thief’ who died found guilty of owning a stash of five lovers, to her precedent, Catherine of Aragon, who allegedly had relations with Henry’s brother and had the audacity to deny it for 24 years; then there is third wife Jane Seymour, accused of baiting the king with her sexuality and catalyzing Boleyn’s fall; German princess Anne of Cleves, charged with homosexual relationships; Katherine Howard, labeled a ‘brainless whore’ who played with fire under her husband’s nose, and Catherine Parr, who loved another man the five years of her marriage and married him within months of Henry’s death.

“Men still have trouble recognizing that a woman can… have ambition, good looks, sexuality and common sense. A woman can have all those facets… yet men, in literature and drama… need to… polarize us as either… whore or… angel. That sensibility is prevalent, even today,” Natalie Dormer, award-winning actress portraying Anne Boleyn on The Tudors, said in 2008.

Indeed, whether the six wives were of the greatest sexual morality or not, all of them were too complex to be labeled merely as dirty ‘Eve’s or virginal ‘Mary’s. Catherine of Aragon was the first female diplomat; Jane Seymour had the wisdom to keep a low-profile; Anne of Cleves was a life-long friend to her stepchildren; Katherine Howard comforted Henry at his darkest; Catherine Parr was the successful author of two books.

Of the ‘scandal of Christendom’, as she was labeled by Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn was flirtatious by nature, but Henry had been separated three years from Catherine before proposing marriage to Anne, and the charges laid against her were famously trumped, thus leaving “no reason whatsoever,” according to writer Claire Ridgway, for her to be called a ‘whore’. Intelligent enough to lead both Renaissance and Reformation, charitable enough to fight her husband to focus money on education for the poor, and an inspiration to her daughter, guilty or not of promiscuity, there was too much to Anne, as is the case for most victimized women, today, to be categorized as just one thing, and that, a slut.

“Slut-shaming can hurt any woman. A woman might be dead for centuries but remember: her life took us one step closer to eliminating sexism – for that her name should be revered, not defiled,” high school senior, Jubilee Cheung, says.