Denim Day- By Bella Verdesco

    Here are the facts; every 73 seconds an American is sexually assaulted, in the United States alone around 433,648 victims (age 12 and older) are raped and sexually assaulted each year, and around 17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted and/or completed rape as of the year 1998. The facts don't lie, this is an issue in our world today...so why is nobody talking about this?
     On April 29, a world-wide event called Denim Day occurred in which people were encouraged to wear denim jeans to raise awareness for rape and sexual assault. Jeans were chosen as the article of clothing to wear since it is tough, rugged material meant to withstand the harsh elements, but there's also a deeper meaning to this. In Italy, the year 1992, an 18-year-old girl was raped by her 45-year-old driving instructor. He took her to an isolated road, pulled her out of the car, removed her jeans, and forcefully raped her. He was sentenced to jail but years later appealed for the conviction claiming it was consensual. The Italian Supreme Court overturned his conviction and he was sent free. 

   Enraged by the verdict, women in the Italian Parliament launched a protest wearing jeans outside on the steps of the Supreme Court. The protest was picked up by international media and the word spread to the USA. The first Denim Day in America was then held in LA in April of 1999 and has since continued. 

   Until a few days ago, I never knew Denim Day existed. I was just scrolling through Tik-Tok when I started to come across all of these viral videos of women sharing their stories of the heartless men who sexually assaulted them. With the more videos I saw, the more emotional I became to the point where I started to cry. Seeing so many young women around my age crying as they talked about a horrific act that they did not consent to broke my heart (Note: I would like to point out I am not excluding any men who have been abused, the videos I saw were just of women sharing their stories.)

     After watching all of the videos and researching more about Denim Day it occurred to me, "Why have I never heard of this before?" Reflecting on it, I feel that it needs to be brought up more in mainstream media and talked about in school. This way, our generation and more to come are educated on the topic and we can spread awareness about rape and abuse. Taking it a step further, maybe implement self defense courses into our gym classes so we know how to protect ourselves against predators. 

     The issue of sexual assault and rape is no laughing matter and is happening too often in our world today. This needs to be brought to attention and justice needs to be served for all of the people around the world who have had to deal with rape/assault. 

Resources: 
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
https://www.denimdayinfo.org/why-denim