UW computer science student Amulya Sanagavarapu is raising money to produce a line of consent-themed underwear that encourage sexual-consent education.
Following a fake Victoria’s Secret campaign (PINK loves CONSENT) launched by feminist activism group FORCE last year, Sanagavarapu decided to make consent underwear a reality.
“I thought that it would catch like wildfire because it did go really viral and everybody was tweeting ‘this is really great I want to buy this stuff,’ yet nobody started selling them,” said Sanagavarapu.
After a year of waiting, Sanagavarapu decided to take matters into her own hands and launched a Kickstarter to raise funds to help turn the idea into a wearable product.
The fake PINK campaign set the stage for women’s consent-themed underwear, but Sanagavarapu and her newly founded company <em>Feminist Style </em>are looking to propel the idea to new heights, making the movement gender-inclusive.
“[The men’s line] was inspired by the Vancouver municipal government consent campaign… Their tagline is: don’t be that guy,” said Sanagavarapu.
“Basically the goal is to change the culture from one where guys are bragging about their sexual conquests to one where that doesn’t fly if consent isn’t clearly established… So if the guy is bragging ‘and then I got her a few more drinks so that she’d be willing to sleep with me,’ that’s not cool anymore, don’t be that guy.”
In the future, she hopes to diversify the message, and start consent-themed conversations about all kinds of potential situations.
“I don’t want to stick to the image of this predatory guy and this sexually vulnerable girl, I want to expand from that.”
Sanagavarapu maintains, “Slogans on underwear have only been produced in a way that promotes sexual objectification, I want to change the social stigma… [and] concentrate on rape culture and consent education.”
Sanagavarapu attributes a lot of her success to her internship at a company in Silicon Valley, without which she says she likely wouldn’t have had the courage and motivation to start something on her own.
“Having been in Silicon Valley, having been exposed to all these startups that are basically run by kids out of college who say ‘hey, I have this great idea,’ raise a bunch of money, hire their friends or the next graduating class — they just go for it — made me realize that doing something like this is actually possible,” Sanagavarapu said.
Though consent-themed underwear is not yet a reality, Sanagavarapu is working hard to make sure it becomes one. She has started a Kickstarter to raise money, and has reached out to popular news sites such as <em>Buzzfeed</em> and <em>Huffington Post</em> to get the word out and put her project on the map.
For more information, or to contribute to the cause, visit <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.kickstarter.com</a> where the project is listed as “Social Change Through Consumerism: Feminist Style.”
