choosing a new project is difficult for all of us; you kind of need to predict wether it’s going to work, wether you can milk out enough information, research and interest to be able to see it through to the end. For the new semester it wasn’t really a question as to what I wanted to cover, it came blaring into my mind since last September and has taken route.
I want to explore the experiences women go through in their lives, the unresolved feelings of injustice and unrest that we live with alongside our beauty and femininity. We are in an age of acceptance, of body positivity and promoting natural beauty and feminine power, however there are still so many things we don’t talk about. Period poverty, miscarriage, pregnancy, sexual assault, spiking, sexism, harassment. These things occur in The lives of every women you know, ask them. Every women has a story that isn’t being shared.
I am a survivor of sexual assault. I went to the police the nigh
t after it happened (19.9.19) and gave a statement that made it feel more like I was to blame for what happened and for the fact I didn’t know what the man looked like. I went to uni the next day and the day after, I went to work over the weekend and I pushed myself not to let it effect me. I told my classmates on the Monday after it happened because they knew something wasn’t right. I felt to ashamed and scared to talk about it but when I did I was met with so much love and support and also with the experiences of girls who had gone through similar to what I had done. It surprised me how many of the women I knew had a story just like mine. for months I would get random visits from the police, they took my DNA, they took my clothes (which I still haven’t got back) and I thought it would be done. on the last week on uni, after working hard to pick myself back up and fight against the feelings of anger and anguish and making it through the semester in one piece I got a phone call to say that the investigation was going to be closed with no conclusion. I was assaulted inside a club in clear view of cctv with two bouncers as witnesses, the cctv of the club turns over every seven days, it took the police two weeks after me reporting what happened to even ask to check the cctv by which time it was gone.
I, like many women have experienced a great injustice, and I’ve been left with a charge to make it different. I shouldn’t feel like I can’t trust the police to do their job. I shouldn’t feel like a t shirt and jeans is an unacceptable outfit. I am angry at the fact that this happens to girls every day. And there are so many other things that women feel they can’t share. It’s time we supported each other and made it okay to share.
It’s time to point out these injustices and tell the world it is not okay to make me feel ashamed. It is not okay that this happened. I won’t let another woman feel alone in their experience. Be a strong, beautiful, boss ass bitch.
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