Editor's Column: Word choice

"Let's hug it out, bitch!"

Perhaps my favorite quote from Entourage. One guess to figure out the donor of this phrase. Who else but Ari Gold can you picture uttering, or rather shouting, these words? Maybe it isn't as memorable as when he called E a "c- muscle" or referred to Medellin as a "bad piece of p-," telling E to "just forget that you smelled it and move on." It just wouldn't be right if every other word that came out of his mouth wasn't racist, sexist, homophobic, or just plain vulgar, that's how a Hollywood mega-agent talks, even if he is answering his phone in the synagogue.

It's HBO and it's Entourage, uncensored and therefore true to life. Seeing these characters smoking weed and talking about jerking off is what makes the show relatable and therefore valuable. Lose the Hollywood backdrop and replace it with the masonry of Boston College's Chestnut Hill campus, and you have the same dynamic of any Walsh eight-man.

In the episode "Sorry, Ari," Ari rewards Dana's loyalty to him with the flattering suggestion of a quick hand job in his car. Though flattering, as a fictional Warner Bros. power, she obviously declines. We cool, we cool.

Somehow though, we still love and respect him. A joke as always, it isn't about word choice, it is about continuing his image as the carefree jerk we know and love. It's funny right?

When a girl is called a slut by a boy she has known since freshman year because he has witnessed her hook up with multiple boys over their three years at BC, it is funny right? When a universal-he passes a universal-she-friend at a party while she is being hit on, and makes a covert gesture behind the unknowing boy of a darting tongue between two fingers in the shape of a V, and she responds back in the same way, it is funny right? When we pass girls walking down Comm. Ave. on Sunday mornings in heels and short dresses and whisper "whore," it is funny right?

What's up, slut?

Somewhere along the way, words such as "slut" and "bitch," terms used mainly as slights against women, have become terms of endearment. We all do it, maybe not to the extent of Ari Gold, but it's part of slang vocabulary. These words that cast women in terms strictly of sexuality or, even better, liken them to female animals in the form of a metaphorical analogy for their unfeminine and therefore inhuman aggressive natures, have come to replace a more varied speech (I know, look at us and our literary terms, we all got high scores on the SATs). A girl is called by her genitalia just as a boy is referred to by his genitalia, but it isn't offensive.

I am sure that in using this language, we like to see ourselves as witty, maybe even subversive - So subversive that we have come to own words usually used against us, right? Because we can call our girlfriends, roommates, and sisters sluts in passing, we officially have fostered our intellectual selves and asserted our own version of new-age feminism. It's all in fun. See, I'll prove it to you. When I use the word "slut," I am actually making fun of the other people who use it seriously. Those silly boys, they get confused, but I know, and my best friend the "whore" knows, that my sarcasm is actually a critique. Colbert ain't got nothing on me.

In an effort to prove our maturity, many of us have receded into a limited vocabulary and a limited worldview. Restricting our self-expression to slang terms must have some consequences? Word choice. The language we use day-to-day, language that vocalizes the differentiation between our outdated parents and our in-vogue selves, perhaps only marks our stupidity.

In using this repulsive language, yes, we may demolish the sting these words carry as taboos. But in using the language of chauvinist pigs, what differentiates us from them? Imitation is the finest form of flattery.

It's all good. We'll just hug it out, bitch.