“What were you wearing?”
It’s an issue that victims of sexual assault hear more often than not. The implication within the question, whether intended or otherwise not, is that the sexual assault could have been prevented in case the victim were wearing something different as soon as they were attacked.
An exhibit called “What Had you been Wearing?” recently opened within the University of Florida’s Ustler Hall and seeks to dispel that myth forever.
The exhibit, inspired by Mary Simmerling’s poem, What I have been Wearing, came to be depending on stories from anonymous UF students detailing their assault and just what we were looking at wearing once it heats up occurred. The project received 34 submissions, 13 of which were chosen for display.
“I’m proud to have brought this to UF,” said Lazaro Tejera, the director for the Gender and Sexualities Committee of UF’s AMSA chapter, along with the student who developed the understanding of getting the exhibit on campus.
Each display features a gown recreated with a student’s story plus a card that displays each story.
The form of the exhibit is simple, but that doesn’t relieve from its impact. The clothing on show is only normal everyday clothes, things as elementary as jeans as well as a t-shirt or pajamas. It demonstrates the tough reality of sexual assault: Now you can become a victim, whatever they actually do or what they’re wearing.
“One of your main reasons why this exhibition can be so powerful is simply because it shows how ordinary the clothing were the fact that survivors were wearing at the time of their sexual assault,” said Dr. Maddy Coy, a lecturer inside the university’s Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research.
The exhibit also removes the stereotype that attackers are always anonymous strangers the victim has not met. The scholars whose stories were displayed were victimized by friends, significant others, as well as household.
UF’s exhibit is among the 162 exhibits to check in colleges country wide since first exhibit appeared along at the University of Arkansas in 2013.
The exhibit was made in a collaboration involving the American Medical Student Association and STRIVE at GatorWell. The organizations spent a while planning and allowing the exhibit and tend to be hoping it should reach several people as they can.
“It means a whole lot for me personally, to not only build it, but to generally be the voice persons and share their stories if they don’t wish to get it done outwardly,” said Brenna Masgai, a peer educator at STRIVE and another of the exhibit’s student organizers.
The exhibit will be displayed through April about the third floor of Ustler Hall. You will have a gap reception to your event held on Friday, April 6 at 5:30 p.m.
