Performance Artist Wears Lingerie Around New York City to Protest Slut-Shaming
November 22, 2014 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Artist Diana Oh has been wearing her underwear in public – but it’s not because she’s an exhibitionist.
Oh has been staging performance installations around New York City to send a message about female sexuality. During her act – which she has dubbed {my lingerie play} – Oh proudly dons undergarments and holds two paper bags that share her feelings about the double standards she believes women are forced to endure.
“I’m writing {my lingerie play} because I’m a woman who enjoys wearing lingerie but does not enjoy: being catcalled, being trafficked, being sold, being owned, being told to be unhealthily thin, being told to age unnaturally, being street harassed and followed home by a car full of men at 2 in the morning, and being told bitches ain’t s—,” she writes on her bags. “I’m writing {my lingerie play} because I’m a woman who enjoys wearing lingerie and many many other things.”
Oh has already staged several performances that have taken her to Times Square, Union Square and the Brooklyn Museum.
“People are threatened by the word ‘lingerie’ in a way that they aren’t by the word ‘underwear,’ ” she posted on Facebook. “We must drop the slut shaming and dehumanizing. It feeds into unacceptable violence against women all over the world.”
Oh hopes her performance art will ultimately inspire a greater level of respect for women and their bodies.
“The problem isn’t sexualization, the problem is the degradation that comes along with women expressing it,” she writes. “We’ve been taught that women attract violence/attention/catcalling/violation and are asking for it. And this needs to STOP. IMMEDIATELY.”
