I love Denim Day. And I’ve finally figured out why.
Denim Day comes around once a year during April’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month – typically the last Wednesday of the month. Maybe you were among the people last week around the globe (including my home state of Colorado) who arrived in schools and workplaces, parks and stores, living rooms and hallways wearing jeans. Maybe you accessorized with teal (the official color for Sexual Assault Awareness Month) or buttons that declared “Consent is Sexy” or “I [heart] survivors.” Or maybe you wondered why so many people were wearing jeans at work and posting smiling denim-clad group shots to social media.
What is Denim Day?
Denim Day’s history goes back to a sexual assault case in Italy, where the country’s Supreme Court overturned a rape conviction because the survivor was wearing tight jeans. As many have written about, including my colleagues at the Colorado Coalition against Sexual Assault, the women of the Italian Parliament showed up the next day wearing denim to protest the verdict. The public action captured worldwide attention, laying the foundation in 1999 for what has become an annual event.
The Global Denim Day organizers describe the day as a chance to “practice solidarity and support survivors.”
As a psychologist, I can tell you that both practice and support are key for taking action to address sexual assault in our communities.
Practice for Change
Many of us probably have stereotypes about what social change takes. Maybe your mind jumps to images of someone marching with a bullhorn, leading a crowd in chants. Or maybe your brain conjures images of legislative hearings and the huge efforts required to pass new laws.
Marches and legislation are certainly two routes to social change. However, both set us up to assume that change is about big and bold (in the case of a public protest) or complicated (in the case of navigating the legislative process) actions. Those images also set us up to believe what’s important is the finish line – the end of a march or the signing of a bill.
What we know from psychology as well as social change movements, though, shows a different picture. Decades of psychology research and clinical practice show that changing systems starts with recognizing and changing individual patterns. Individual change, in turn, facilitates change in our interpersonal relationships and social networks.
We also know from psychological science that change requires building up new skills and habits. Put another way, change takes practice.
As a psychologist, then, I love that Denim Day is a chance to practice taking action together. By emphasizing practice, we recognize that each of us has to build up knowledge about sexual assault and discover ways to talk about these issues with the people in our lives – from friends and family to coworkers and legislators. Raising these issues doesn’t come naturally to many of us, given that talking about sexual assault has long been treated as something taboo. And so, we have to practice in order to build up the skills and habits to talk about sexual assault openly and effectively. In turn, we can learn to invite people to work with us to imagine new strategies for working together to end sexual assault and support survivors. Through practice, we begin the work of translating awareness of the problem of sexual into action.
Support as Action
When we put on a pair of jeans on Denim Day, we also practice making the problem of sexual assault public. With a sea of jeans in a conference room or a classroom, we change our daily environment by making support for survivors visible. We also demonstrate that we each share an interest in ending sexual assault, regardless of our genders or life experiences.
Tangibly demonstrating support for survivors of sexual assault is incredibly important, as research from my team and others around the world have shown. Too often, sexual assault survivors are met with disbelief or blame, which can add to the alienation and isolation that is common after sexual violence. In the face of alienation, showing survivors that they are not alone is powerful and important.
Missed Denim Day? You’re Still Right on Time
Sure, Denim Day has passed for this year. But you’re right on time to create and take other opportunities to practice talking to the people in your life about sexual assault and intimate violence. Maybe you toss on a teal t-shirt next week as Sexual Assault Awareness Month winds down. You can use your fashion choice to practice explaining that sexual assault is far-too-common, affecting people of all genders, with serious consequences for survivors and our communities. With just a t-shirt, you can open doors to help people learn how to respond to disclosures or find resources in your community.
And with each conversation, you get to practice showing people that you believe a different future is possible if we work together to end intimate violence and support survivors.
Here’s to building a better world together, one action at a time.
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For more on transforming awareness into action and building a better world together, I invite you to explore Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence against Women, available from Oxford University Press or:
Trauma Research Notes 