TOUCH-SENSITIVE DRESS

WOMEN around the globe often complain about unwelcome attention and gestures from men, particularly in the workplace as well as during a night out.

This outcry led to the #Metoo movement, an international movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault with celebrities such as Alyssa Milano, America Ferrera and Debra Messing all voicing their support.

An acclaimed global advertising agency has now taken steps to prove that women are being mishandled at the hands of men.

Their experiment found that 86% of women on a night out in a major South American city were harassed.

This finding came about when Ogilvy Brasil created a touch-sensitive dress that tracked how often women have been groped and harassed.

According to Quartzy, an online lab management platform and scientific research supply marketplace, the campaign was conducted on behalf of beverage company Schweppes with the goal to “elevate the issue to men, who expressed in preliminary interviews that harassment was not a major issue for club-going women”.

Quartzy said apart from tracking how often women were groped on an average night out in Brazil, the dress also identified the degree of the intensity of the unwelcomed gestures.

For this project, titled “The Dress for Respect”, researchers embedded the dress with sensor technology that tracked touch and pressure.

The information was then relayed to a visual system to allow researchers to track harassment in real time.

In a bid to carry out the experiment, researchers sent three women to a party wearing the dress.

During the course of a night, Quartzy said they saw a heat-map version of the dress steadily lighting up in the areas where the women are being grabbed.

This showed it be mostly on their lower back, backside and arms.

The visual was also imposed over footage of the women brushing off the men and asking not to be touched.

Following the women who were part of the experiment’s night out, the research found that in just under four hours, the women were touched a combined 157 times.

Following the night out, the men from the party were brought in to review the experiment.

According to Quartzy, they for the most part expressed shock and surprise at the now-bruised image of the dress.

Ogilvy South Africa were not immediately available for comment on their Brazilian counterpart’s experiment.

It is not yet clear whether a similar experiment will be carried out in South Africa. | Staff Reporter