An agency created dresses which record groping in an attempt to expose the harassment women regularly face in nightclubs.
As much as people should recognise and respect their actions can make others uncomfortable, too many write off incidents on nights out as just part and parcel of the club experience, which is pretty tragic when you think about it.
In an attempt to make people pay attention to the amount of times women are groped against their will and emphasise the enormity of the problem, advertising agency Ogilvy created the smart dresses to keep a record of the unwanted touches and used them in an experiment with three women.
Take a look at the results here:
The dresses had sensors sewn into the material which recorded contact and the pressure of the touch. Any impact the sensor picked up was then sent via wifi to a computer, which kept track of what was happening and translated the information into a heat map of location and time of contact with the body.
The three women involved in the experiment, Juliana Schulz, Tatiana Rosas and Luisa Castro, wore the sensor-filled dress to a Brazilian party, where their experiences were measured for 3 hours and 47 minutes.
When men at the party were spoken to about women being touched without consent, they responded with shocking comments such as ‘Who would go out on a Thursday night just to dance?’, and ‘I think it’s just whining about everything!’
OglivyDespite walking away from men and telling them to stop, the women were groped a total of 157 times in the short time they were present in the club – a rate of more than once every five minutes per woman.
Considering these results are from just three women on one night, the video and the smart dress help emphasise how much of a problem groping and unwanted touching really is.
Though the video was shot in Brazil, where 86% of women have been harassed in nightclubs, it reflects a worldwide issue.
Sharing her opinion on the problem, smart dress-wearer Tatiana said:
A woman is not an animal to be cornered, to be captured.
Luisa added:
I’m an interesting person. I’m worth five minutes of talking.
The video was met with approval from many people who are in support of raising awareness of the problem, though as many commenters pointed out, it shouldn’t take a video and a dress with sensors for people to believe how often women are groped and touched inappropriately.
One person commented:
If they just listened to women- they wouldn’t be so shocked.
Another shared the same opinion, writing:
I wonder what would happen if we just believed women…novel and radical idea I know…
While a third commented:
We don’t need these studies for [women]. We already know how awful it is. We need this study to prove to men that it happens way more than they think. Because they assume we’re always emotional and over exaggerating.
The results of the video are staggering; it is important to recognise how often unwanted contact takes place.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.