Helping Advocate Rights Through Stories organized Empowerment Through Fashion this past week — a showcase in recognition of National Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The event served to underscore fashion’s relationship with self expression and recovery from trauma.
“The whole premise of this week is reclaiming the meaning of our bodies and our sexuality by what we choose to wear,” third-year Commerce student Elyse Eilerman said. “I think fashion is a good vehicle to do that because survivors often feel like they don’t have control over their bodies or that it has been taken away from them.”
The event consisted of a fashion show featuring University students as models. Eilerman said the show’s opening was inspired by chrysalis — the transformational stage of a butterfly’s life — and featured models entering in outfits of white followed by those in increasingly vibrant colors. The second scene took an avant-garde angle, and the third focused on the extreme personal styles of the models. The showcase closed with the models wearing blank t-shirts on which they wrote what beauty and fashion means to them.
“The ideology behind this is that no matter what someone is wearing, whether it be a revealing outfit, it doesn’t mean that anyone has the right to sexually assault you,” fourth-year College student Ola Bam said. “So, just having power and domain over what you wear and expressing yourself in any way that you want.”
Throughout the event, students delivered song and spoken word performances to raise awareness of sexual violence.
“I feel like fashion is very relevant to sexual assault awareness as it is a means to express yourself and expressing yourself is something that is extremely important, especially when you face a trauma, or something that happens to your body,” Bam said.
Third-year Engineering student Sri Ranga Aruna Kodakalla said the event also aimed at addressing the value of “owning” one’s body.
“The main goal is just being able to have power and domain over your own body and being able to celebrate your body and see it for how it is, instead of trying to conform yourself to media standards of beauty — just be yourself and be whoever you want to be,” Ranga Aruna Kodakalla said.
Members of HARTS are planning to screen the documentary they created depicting University students answering questions about their fashion choices.
“We just went around the community and asked people questions about what their style means to them and how their body empowers them and what else empowers them in their life,” Ranga Aruna Kodakalla said.
Although the event was new to Grounds this year, members hope it will gain traction in years to come.
“I hope to have this as a project every semester not just once a year, because I think it’s a project that can be ongoing and just opens up a discussion to just talk about not necessarily just sex-based violence or sexual assault, but also just issues facing [the] 18 to mid-30 year old age group,” Ranga Aruna Kodakalla said. “It’s important to constantly bring up the issue because there are a lot of people who simply don’t know where to turn to.”
Ranga Aruna Kodakalla said in the end, it’s not about how many attend the event but rather how many attendees feel empowered after the experience.
“I think that the goal is that the people who are involved in the event will gain a sense of confidence in what we are doing and the message we are sending,” Ranga Aruna Kodakalla said. “I hope that everyone feels a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more welcome in the community here.”
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