What Were You Wearing?

Common card · No. 307869

What Were You Wearing? is a visual art exhibit created in 2013 by Jen Brockman and Mary Wyandt-Hiebert. It features representations of clothing worn at the time of sexual assaults, paired with brief survivor narratives. The exhibit, which first opened at the University of Arkansas in April 2014, was inspired by the poem What I Was Wearing, written by Mary Simmerling in 2002 and copyrighted in 2005. The poem challenges the enduring tendency to blame victims of sexual violence by drawing attention to the persistent question, "What were you wearing?" Since its debut, the exhibit has been staged in all 50 U.S. states and in more than 38 countries. The exhibit addresses themes related to public perceptions of clothing and sexual violence, including rape myths that the victim was to blame because of the clothing they wore.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Mary.Simmerling, CC BY 4.0