.december.1.
When I was younger I wore dresses fairly regularly. I felt completely confident and comfortable to wear them as I pleased, and then to switch to a pair of jeans or overalls with incredible ease.
Today I realized that this isn’t so true of me now.
There seems to be this unwritten rule in our society that what you wear will largely define WHO you are. If you are choosing to dress a certain way, you are projecting a connotation onto yourself, perhaps even unknowingly. I am ______.
Today was the first day of Dressember. I wore a skirt to school for the first time in quite a while. It’s funny how when you are unfamiliar with a practice, and you choose to put yourself in a public place it feels extremely uncomfortable, even awkward. Is everyone looking at me because I am wearing a dress? Does anyone even notice that I am wearing a dress? Contradicting thoughts and emotions; there isn’t much to care about, and yet everything seems to matter all at once. What if I was forced to wear clothes that made me feel completely uncomfortable and despicable e v e r y d a y ? How would I cope? What frameworks would I set up in my mind in order to get me through a day of mild to extreme discomfort? How would I be: me, when I am forced to DRESS as though I am someone else? Would I misplace ‘me’ for a little while? Or would I completely loose ‘me’ forever? Could I answer someone and say: “I am____”?
Women (and men) all around the world are being forced to not only dress in a particular way, but also to sell their bodies to complete strangers. No choice. No rights. No value attached to their lives save the tip they get from the John.
And I am walking on campus thinking, “This is uncomfortable.”
"I AM ONLY ONE, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will NOT refuse to do something that I CAN do." -Helen Keller
Let’s do the something that we can do TODAY: Support local efforts to help victims of human trafficking here in Edmonton: ceasenow.org Support International efforts to end human trafficking around the world: http://justact.ijm.ca/stephgurn