Last weekend, I sat on the subway, thumbing through a magazine and grumbling about how the train is so slow. As I sat there, more and more people got on the train. Then two pairs of feet caught my attention — one was manicured with bright red polish and strapped into a sky high silver sandals, the other was in electric blue stilettos. Both pairs of ankles were attached to long bare legs, as their owners awkwardly sat down across from me. They were wearing skirts so short that I could almost see their underwear. It seemed like any moment, one — or maybe both — of them would open her knees a little too wide and I’d be forced to catch a glimpse of her baby-maker. “What are you looking at?” one of them snapped at a man who leered at them.
These girls were tarted up. It was only 8 p.m.
Watching them attempt to cross their legs, and then try to just squeeze their knees together, I felt adrenaline rush through me. I felt like I should do something. But what? Throw a pair of sweatpants at them? These are adults. They’re just having fun, I thought. They can take care of themselves.
But then another part of me thought: how naive.
No good was going to come to these two women that night. Best case scenario: one of them would walk above a subway grate and the world would see what kind of bikini wax she was rocking, and her stiletto would inevitably catch (those subway grates are a real bitch on skinny heels) and she’d twist her ankle and end up in the emergency room. Worst case scenario: Some a-hole would take one look at them and sense an easy target.
The more I think about sluttly clothing and its relationship to sexual assault, the more I am convinced that mini-skirts are a feminist issue—one that young women in the U.S. need to think about in addition to more obvious issues like equal pay for equal work, better access to gynecological care, and the need for more women representing us in government. Extremely revealing clothing —the kind we see on “Jersey Shore,” the kind we know women wear on college campuses all across the country, the kind we see around us in bars on weekend nights, the kind that fueled “Charlie’s Angels,” the kind that inspires all those “last night, I looked so hot” stories that people like to tell—regularly puts women in danger in the name of a good time.
In an ideal world, rape wouldn’t exist. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t matter how much a woman had to drink, what she was wearing, or what overtures she had given—no man would ever consider sex without explicit consent and would recognize that a short skirt isn’t an invitation to rape. But we don’t live in that world. Unfortunately, short of some Herculean sensitivity raising effort, we do not have control over what men, drunk or sober, will do when presented with our bare legs. What we do have control over is our side of the equation — how much we decide to show.
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So right about now you’re probably like, Hold up. Did I get lost on the internet, because this is some bullshit right here. And you would be right! That is some bullshit right there. It’s exactly the kind of bullshit that’s currently being crapped out in this post, “Why Being Drunk is a Feminist Issue” (I would suggest skipping the comments, which appear to be a gathering place for the Least Intelligent People on the Internet). The piece is basically word for word what I wrote above, except about drinking instead of mini-skirts. And it’s Feminist, of course, because it’s about Helping Women.
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