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Image: thebrownandwhite.com
The last Wednesday of April has become internationally known as Denim Day. In other words, today’s outfit of the day is jeans. This is a campaign to protest against the misconceptions that exist around the reasons why women are raped. Moreover, this is also a sexual assault awareness movement. And where the initiative comes from, see in the article below, writes agora.md.
Denim Day is a campaign held on the last Wednesday of April, which is considered Sexual Assault Awareness Month. “There is no excuse and no invitation to rape” is the slogan of Denim Day.
The story of Denim Day begins in Italy in 1992, when an 18-year-old girl was raped by the 45-year-old driving instructor who was taking her to her first driving lesson. She reported the rape and the perpetrator was arrested and prosecuted. However, he was later convicted of rape and sentenced to prison.
Years later, the Italian Supreme Court overturned the conviction and the author was released. The judges considered that since the victim was wearing very tight jeans, she had to help him take them off, and by removing the jeans it was not rape, but consensual sex. This became known throughout Italy as the “jeans alibi”.
Furious at the verdict, women in the Italian Parliament launched a jeans-wearing protest on the steps of the Supreme Court. This protest was picked up by the international press, which inspired the California Senate and Assembly to do the same on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento.
Patti Occhiuzzo Giggans, executive director of Peace Over Violence, saw this in the media and thought everyone should to wear jeans to protest against all the myths about why women and girls are raped. Thus, Denim Day in Los Angeles appeared. The first Denim Day in LA event was held in April 1999 and has continued annually since then.
As the longest-running sexual violence prevention and education campaign in history, Denim Day asks community members, elected officials, businesses and students to make a social statement along with their fashion statement by wearing jeans on this day, as visible means of protest against misconceptions surrounding sexual violence.
Expresul.md
