What We Talk about When We Talk about Sexual Harassment
Wei-Chi Su Nov. 2020THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CLOTHES
AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT
In the article on GUTS—Rape Culture 101(2016), they wrote: “ Rape culture is an
environment in which rape is presumed to be
inevitable and certain people are taught to fear
rape and certain people are not. Rape persists
because rape is related to the universal
devaluing of people and behavior deemed
to be feminine... Rape persists because the
language we ascribe to sex facilitates the
weaponization of sex into rape.” Despite the
fact that feminism is rising, there is still a long
way to go. The devaluation of being feminine
and the weaponization of sex makes me
question our relationship between clothes and
the way we dress— Are we still spreading and
absorbing these concepts without knowing?
Do people feel a connection between what they
wear and sexual harassment? Participating
in the interview, a number of people were
shown with the images of 'What were you
wearing?’ Survivor Art Installation originated
at the University of Arkansas in 2013, and The
Guilty Clothes Collection held by The Survivors
Trust in 2017 without knowing the topic. They
described the clothes as “casual clothes for
grocery shopping, pajama, bikini for beach or
pool parties, and a dress with a green sweater
underneath might be for a date.” The responses
were quite similar, those clothes are just daily
outfits, no difference from what we would wear.
However, after being informed about the stories
of the images, the way they look at the clothes
have changed. They may believe what those
women were wearing somehow impacted what
happened to them. “ Maybe the criminal already
knew this person or has relation to that person
which is often the case. And I think clothes
don't play a big role in these circumstances.
But maybe in other cases clothes still play a
part,” said a 23 years old young man. Besides
being startled and denying at the beginning, all
the interviewees expressed their concerns that
the clothes might still be a factor in the context
of sexual assault in general.
HEURISTIC: THE PROTOTYPE IN OUR MIND
Unexpectedly, a young woman mentioned
‘heuristic’ during the conversation, and I
found it extremely entrancing. The heuristic
is a mental shortcut that allows people to
solve problems and make judgments quickly
and efficiently in conditions of incomplete or
uncertain information. With that said, while
looking at sexual assault cases at the first
moment, we might use what the information we
have been told or learned unconsciously and
give an immediate response.
“ When sex was discussed it was to scold young
girls for ‘dressing to attract male attention.’ Our
choice of dress was either a means to prevent
or draw attention. Our bodies were intended for
the male gaze but only when it was appropriate
for those men to see them.” (Marisa, P., 2016)
Growing up surrounded by religion, this is what
Marisa Peters has been told.
It is widely known that heuristics include the
availability heuristic and the representative-
ness heuristic. The availability heuristic
means making decisions based on how easy
it is to bring something to mind. Since these
relevant examples are more readily available
in their memories, people will tend to judge
these outcomes as being more common or
frequently-occurring. The representativeness
heuristic involves making a decision by
comparing the present situation to the most
relevant prototype that already exists in
our minds. This is the reason why people
frequently ask the sexually assaulted victims
what they were wearing. It is based on the
more easily approached example and relevant
prototype in their mind. The incomplete but
subjectively relevant prototype might come
from our religion, culture, education, social
impact, and personal experiences. For ages,
people seem to have a hard time detach
the connection between sexual assault and
clothes, and fashion may have to take part in
the responsibility.

Vogue Ukraine September 2019, Lulu In Kyiv
FASHION AS A CONTRIBUTOR
TO OUR MENTAL PROTOTYPE
Whilst looking at the images of the victim’s
clothes, the interviewees were also presented
with some Vogue covers. These Vogue
covers are from different countries, with
female models in the photo. Among them,
depending on how the interviewees described,
all the images seem to be related to sexual
information. In one of the covers, a woman is
standing in the water with lots of masculine
men behind her. Some said it looks very
sexual even though she is dressed in a sort
of powerful suit. And the other mentioned it
looks like those men are competing for her.
In another cover, a woman is wearing a very
revealing dress, sitting on the ground in a kind
of sexy pose with the headline “Power to the
youth.” In the words of the interviewees, youth
doesn’t sexually need the power, and it’s quite
unfair to say power to the youth in that picture.
“ Do you think this is the ideal image fashion
wants us to look or be like?” I asked at the end
of the interview. Some interviewees decidedly
agreed that this is what we see everywhere.
Not just on Vogue but in many other
magazines and the billboards on the streets. In
this sense, they claim that fashion imposes us
to feel sexy and they see this as a message.
Others seem to be more reserved. They
narrated these covers as eye-catchers whose
purpose is to catch the attention and sell the
dream of fashion, but not directly reflect on
what people wear. Still, fashion might give
power to the women who are wearing those
clothes, but the power they gain is by feeling
sexy and more attractive. “Maybe people are
not actively looking at the pictures and think
they want to look like that, but it might have
some impact on the subconscious mind”, said
by a respondent.
In the nineteenth century, fashion magazines
have established the link between femininity
and consumption. (Kate Nelson Best, 2017)
As artistic and embodied researcher Chet
Bugter mentioned in The Luxury Fashion
Magazine as Disciplinary Agent (2019) “Luxury
fashion magazines generally portray women as hyper-elegant and sensual beings, who are
simultaneously utterly frail and solely present
as objects to be looked at.” Luxury fashion
magazines enforce gender binary codes,
and women are continuously shown to be
feminine and sexy. The fashion press started
to portray fashionable clothing as a way to
access specific and desirable lifestyles since
the nineteenth century, and fashion magazines
have become an increasingly important factor
in shaping people’s identities.
‘The Hands-on-Hip Pose’, ‘The Expansive
Pose’, and ‘The Portrait Pose’ creating the
angular postures and elegant silhouettes by the
bony female models are the images we expect
in the fashion magazines. (Ibid) Virtuous,
beautiful, and maternal but also thin, white
cisgender, able-bodied, sticky heterosexual,
neurotypical are the qualities of the standard of
the most respectable performance of femininity
in our society. (GUTS, 2016) And luxury
fashion magazines have emphasized these
characteristics for decades.
