One of the rules of the world is that if a bench has a ‘wet paint’ sign on it, people will inevitably touch it and then be surprised when they get paint on their hands. I can only guess that’s the same backwards logic that means when women tell people they’re being groped in clubs, people will disbelieve them and then be surprised when technology proves those women right.
The ‘smart dress’ is a dress lined with pressure sensors that records when people grope someone. It was created by the Sao Paulo branch of advertising company Ogilvy, as part of a video campaign with Schweppes called The Dress For Respect.
The video opens with the statistic that 86% of Brazilian women have been harassed on a night out. The same survey shows that 86% of Thai women had experienced harassment, 79% for Indian women, and 75% of English women. Australia wasn’t in this particular survey, but the ABS reports that over half of Australian women have experienced sexual harassment.
The video moves along to interview some guys outside nightclubs. They moan about how “I think it’s just complaining about everything!” and question “who will go out on a Thursday night just to dance?”, as if just going out for fun with friends is a foreign concept.
After showing a bit about how the dress is made, the video follows three women on a night out. In 3 hours and 47 minutes, the women were groped a grand total of 157 times. That’s more than 40 times every hour.
The gross men from the street are brought in, and are all genuinely shocked by the results. Again, just like touching the bench with the wet paint sign and being surprised when the paint is, in fact, wet.
Is it really so hard to believe women that we have to go to this extent? It’s not just one or two women talking about it either, it’s the majority of us. How many women have to experience harassment before people believe it’s real?
The smart dress is the latest in a long line of technology that’s tried to increase women’s safety. We already have nail polish that changes colour if somebody has spiked your drink, hair clips that call emergency services if they detect trouble, and bracelets that let a potential partner know if you’re too drunk to consent. Technology is great and all, but you want to know what would stop the need for all the effort that goes into creating these things?
Stop.
Harassing.
Women.
Unfortunately the smart dress was a one-off for an ad campaign, so we can’t get our hands on one no matter how useful it sounds. It was an interesting concept while it lasted though, and now that these guys have their ‘proof’, I can only hope we won’t need to make any replicas.