https://youtu.be/pQzdLZ3vfIE?t=389
I normally don't write comments like this. But these thoughts have been swirling around in my head like a washing machine, and honestly, I need to get them out of my head before they make me scream. So I'm writing this down. Because I think one YouTube comment isnt going to change anything, and because I dont want to debate anyone. I just need to put the thought somewhere.
I am a sexual assault survivor. It happened when I was a girl, wearing my school uniform. And no, not one of those ridiculously short skirts people like to imagine when they talk about school uniforms in private schools in Europe or America. I was wearing the horribly made T-shirt and pants my school required. We all wore the same thing.
And still, me, my friends, and my sisters were sexually harassed on the bus on a daily basis.
I remember one time my sister was sitting next to a man who decided to masturbate underneath a newspaper. My dumb ass was sitting right beside him and didn't even notice what was happening. When my sister got to school, she was bawling her eyes out because she had seen it.
And that was just one of many times.
So when I hear women being told that they should avoid certain clothes because they might “make a killer want to come after them,” I can't just hear it as harmless advice about personal safety.
Because I was wearing a uniform.
We were all wearing the same uniform.
And it didn't protect us.
That is why this particular argument bothers me so much.
Saying “I personally don't wear clothes that could make a killer want to come after me” isn't just about personal safety. It implies that a woman's clothing can be one of the reasons a man chooses to rape or kill her.
But the research doesn't support that.
Moor (2010) found no relationship between women's revealing style of dress and their actual experience of sexual violence. Lennon et al. (2017), reviewing the empirical research, likewise found no evidence that “sexy dress” predicts sexual victimization.
What the research does consistently show is that people perceive women in revealing clothing as more sexually available and assign them more blame when they are victimized. That's a documented bias—not evidence that the clothing caused the crime.
And I think that distinction gets completely lost in these conversations.
A woman in lingerie didn't cause her rape.
A woman in a bikini didn't cause her rape.
A woman in a babydoll didn't cause her rape.
A girl in a school uniform didn't cause her assault.
And a woman's clothes certainly don't make her responsible for being murdered.
If we're going to criticize the sexualization of young women, then let's actually criticize the industry, the marketing, the male gaze, and the people who profit from and consume that sexualization.
Because when the conversation keeps putting the faces of women and female celebrities front and center—look at her, look how fake she is, look how sexual she is, look how she's dressing, look at what she's doing wrong—I can't help but wonder whether we're reproducing the exact dynamic we're supposedly criticizing.
Women are constantly taught to compare, judge and police each other.
She's too sexual.
She's not sexual enough.
She's fake pretty.
She's naturally pretty.
She's dressing for attention.
She's trying too hard.
She's asking for it.
And somehow, once again, the conversation becomes about what women are doing wrong.
Meanwhile, the men who sexualize them, the industries that market them, and the culture that teaches men to interpret women's bodies as invitations often disappear from the conversation.
I don't want to tell women how to dress.
I don't want to tell women what they should or shouldn't wear.
And I certainly don't want to tell women that the way to avoid male violence is to make themselves less attractive, less visible, less sexual, or less feminine.
Because I've lived the other side of that argument.
I was a child in a uniform.
And men still chose to sexualize me.
So when we tell women “don't wear that, you might attract the wrong kind of man,” we're not explaining rape or murder.
We're teaching women that they are responsible for managing men's reactions to their bodies.
And that is where personal safety advice becomes victim-blaming.
Don't turn the responsibility for male violence back onto the women being sexualized.
If we want to understand why these aesthetics exist, why girlhood and sexuality are being packaged together, and why young women are marketed this way, then let's have that conversation.
But let's stop making the woman at the center of the image the person who has to answer for everyone else's gaze.
Because “dress differently so men won't hurt you” is not an explanation for male violence.
It's victim-blaming.
Sources:
Moor, A. (2010). She Dresses to Attract, He Perceives Seduction: A Gender Gap in Attribution of Intent to Women’s Revealing Style of Dress and its Relation to Blaming the Victims of Sexual Violence.
Lennon, S., Adomaitis, A. D., Koo, J., & Johnson, K. K. P. (2017). Dress and Sex: A Review of Empirical Research Involving Human Participants and Published in Refereed Journals. Fashion and Textiles, 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-017-0101-5
Awasthi, B. (2017). From Attire to Assault: Clothing, Objectification, and De-humanization – A Possible Prelude to Sexual Violence? Frontiers in Psychology, 8.
