Should women be judged for what they’re wearing?
updated the 6 October 2015 à 23:08
In the 21st century, perceiving women according to their choice of clothing should not be an acceptable move.
Women are often judged by all kinds of artefacts. Case in point – many people would quickly categorise a woman as prudish, of easy virtue or licentious depending on the length of her skirt, the depth her neckline, or the height of her heels. However, as the saying goes, “Clothes do not make the man” nor the woman.
Theresa Wlokka, Frida Regeheim and other students at the Miami Ad School in Hamburg, Germany created an ad campaign for Terre des Femmes – a non-profit Swiss organisation campaigning for women’s rights, gender equality and feminism – to highlight the importance of not judging women by their appearance.
In other words, a woman’s worth should be measured by factors far more important than the length of their skirts, the height of their heels or the depth of their neckline. Thus, the German students conceptualised a powerful series of three ads that depict the chest, legs and feet of a faceless woman and a measuring scale that features words ranging from “whore” to “prude”, depending on what they’re wearing.
These ads brilliantly point out how absurd, unfair and offensive it is to make misguided assumptions about women based solely on their clothing choices. Each ad features the tagline, “Don’t measure a woman’s worth by her clothes” and photographer Loli Maeght goes even further with “Don’t measure a woman at all: she’s unmeasurable.” Now that’s powerful.
Lindsay POUI-DI
