day fourteen

so what does domestic abuse have to do with clothes?  Not much, I would have thought.  But then I was watching a short, and very touching, dvd at work today, aimed at children who have lived with domestic abuse.  Mikey and Jools (in the picture) watch their mum being humiliated because she wears a dress that their dad does not approve of.

We don't thing about how clothes are used to control women in our society - we probably assume that is something that happens in other cultures.  But it happens in our culture too.  For some women, as in the dvd, it is very immediate.  For others, forced to wear certain clothes or make up at work, it is more subtle.

I can choose to restrict my wardrobe to only forty items.  But no-one else should be able to restrict my wardrobe to keep me in my place.