Art Exhibit Powerfully Answers The Question 'What Were You Wearing?'

The installation proves that clothing has nothing to do with sexual assault.

The art project was created in 2013 by Jen Brockman, the director of KU’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Center, and Dr. Mary A. Wyandt-Hiebert, who oversees all programming initiatives at the University of Arkansas’ rape education center. The installation has been featured at several other schools since 2013, including University of Arkansas and University of Iowa.

Brockman told HuffPost that the main goal of “What Were You Wearing?” is to promote awareness about sexual violence and to combat victim-blaming.

“Participants can come into the gallery and see themselves reflected in not only the outfits, but also in the stories,” she said. “To be able to create that moment in this space where they say, ‘Wow I have this outfit hanging in my closet,’ or ‘I wore this this week.’ By doing this we could hopefully reveal the myth that if we just avoid that outfit then we’ll never be harmed or that somehow we can eliminate sexual violence by simply changing our clothes.”

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“When survivors come through, what we hear expressed often is validation because they’ll share with us: ‘This was my outfit. What’s hanging on this wall right now is what I was wearing,’ or ‘That’s my story. That story is just like what happened to me,’” Brockman said. “It’s not the clothing that causes sexual violence, it’s the person who causes harm. Being able to find that peace for survivors and that moment of awareness for communities is the real motivation behind the project.”








https://www.huffpost.com/entry/powerful-art-exhibit-powerfully-answers-the-question-what-were-you-wearing_n_59baddd2e4b02da0e1405d2a

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I posted this here back in 2022 and thought it should move front and forward with all that is happening today.

We have Trump and the Epstein files that the DOJ is refusing to fully release the unredacted files of the survivors of rape and more. Two congressmen are resigning over rape allegations from many sources. Then we have a candidate that said that women need to take responsibility for themselves and not get drunk and then nothing would have happened to them. That is classic victim blaming.

We can do better than this.