Crossing boundaries:bras, lingerie and rape myths in postcolonial urban middle-class India

With the processes of modernization, urbanization and the entry of women in the formal labour market in Indian metropolitan spaces, this paper examines how the modern middle-class woman’s sartorial choices become enmeshed in popular rape myths (false beliefs) that serve to blame her for the wearing of western clothing. The paper articulates the ways in which middle-class women’s social realities are shaped by historical, colonial and nationalist ideologies of modernization, constructed and mediated through moral codes of dressing. By drawing upon original and contemporary empirical narratives from the urban spaces of Delhi and Mumbai, we emphasise how everyday sartorial choices, in relation to particularly the bra and lingerie, can reveal the nuanced ways in which Urban Indian Professional Women (UIPW) seek to understand, negotiate, and resist patriarchal power. Our findings shed light on conflicting and contradictory spatial experiences, where some women internalize and negotiate moral codes of dressing, out of fear, and others who transgress are subject to sanctions. Given the paucity of scholarly literature in this area, the paper makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution with its focus on postcoloniality and everyday discursive material spaces of gendered and sexualized dress practices. It argues for the consciousness raising of everyday urban geographies of dress that reveal complicated structures of power that are often deemed hidden

Undressing the Victim: The Intersection of Evidentiary and Semiotic Meanings of Women\u27s Clothing in Rape Trials

On the night of the alleged rape the woman was wearing a high-necked cocktail dress trimmed with bright colors. She also wore black panty hose, a lace bra, and panties. After the alleged rape, she went to a friend\u27s house, where she borrowed a Madonna T-shirt emblazoned with the words, I think I am a sexual threat. Months later, when William Kennedy Smith was on trial for rape, each of these articles of clothing came before the jury. The judge refused the defense\u27s request that the jury see the actual bra and panties, but permitted the jury to view photographs of them. The defense made sure that the tags identifying the undergarments as apparel from Victoria\u27s Secret appeared in the photographs