For the majority of us, the beginning of December means 3 things: oversized sweaters paired with leggings, infinity scarves and white chocolate peppermint mochas at Starbucks. The season of giving is upon us and two extraordinary women at UT have decided to partner with “Dressember” and raise awareness of human trafficking and exploitation of women by wearing only dresses for the entire month of December. Two representatives, Kate Barnhart and Erica Wheatley are this weeks “Campus Celebrities” and are making it their goal to promote Dressember around the UT campus!
HCTX: What is the vision for Dressember?
KB: I call Dressember a daily celebration of femininity. Through wearing dresses ever day in December and sharing about the cause with our friends and family, our goal is to raise as much money as we can for organizations like International Justice Mission and A-21 that fight against the sexual exploitation that so many women face everyday. Sex trafficking and abuse is way too prevalent in our world. We’re taking a stand against it with dresses!
EW: Dressember uses fashion to advocate for women who’ve been exploited for their femininity. I think it’s really cool because so many women around the world are raped or sexual exploited and blamed because they were wearing a skirt or a dress and society tells them that it was her fault, or that she was “asking for it”. This campaign not only raises money and awareness about the issue, but is also using fashion and femininity to combat the notion that what a woman wears determines her fate. Every woman should be free to express herself and feel beautiful without being ashamed of her body.
HCTX: Why is this issue so important to you?
KB: This issue is important to me because it’s about women, it’s about freedom, and it’s about justice – three things I’m passionate about advocating for. It blows my mind that I can make a difference by simply setting up a fundraising page and wearing pretty dresses everyday. All the money goes towards great organizations.
EW: I have always felt strongly about social justice and equal rights, but in high school I became especially interested in human trafficking once I learned how prevalent it was in Texas, Houston especially. I had this amazing teacher who was such an incredible woman and just a great of example of what it looked like to live your life for God. I soon realized that God was calling me to fight this injustice and wanted to use my life to help all women receive equality and help end human trafficking. I don’t think anyone should be bought and sold for labor or anything. I have grown up with so many rights and such a wonderful life, and I want all women and people to be given this same opportunity.
HCTX: Can you give us some statistics about human trafficking? Especially in Austin?
EW: It’s hard to give actual statistics about human trafficking because of the nature of the industry. Obviously the brothels and pimps aren’t recording anything and giving out info so most of the info is collected by police or social workers, but even then numbers are very gray. I do know that Texas and California have been determined to have the largest amounts of human trafficking. The human trafficking hotline receives the most calls from victims trying to escape from Texas. Houston is probably one of the worst cities in Texas and the US as a whole because of its location, population, and industries. Austin is another city with huge amounts of human trafficking, however a bill just passed making Austin a “slave free city” meaning the city will dedicate more money and resources to ending human trafficking in the city.
HCTX: Wow that’s awesome! I heard that you had a kickoff event to promote Dresember, can you tell me a little bit about it?
EW: Our kick-off event was last Wednesday and we basically wanted to raise awareness about what we were doing and give more girls a chance to participate. We know most girls in Texas don’t have a lot of dresses for the winter so we wanted to have boutiques come out and sell dresses so they could participate. The boutiques also donated 25% of their sales to the UT IJM Dressember campaign page, which was awesome! We raffled off a gift certificate to a local boutique to raise money and just had a great time raising awareness and telling people about human trafficking and how they can help stop it. We also hosted it at Tejas because we wanted guys to be more involved and we thought Tejas would be a great group of guys! We also put the spin on Dressember of “dressing up” rather than restricting to just dresses, that way guys and girls who were unsure about wearing dresses could participate.
HCTX: What will be most challenging for you this month as you continue to wear only dresses?
KB: I think what will be most challenging this month as I continue to wear dresses will be finding creative ways to change up my look each day. I’ll definitely by recycling through my handful of dresses, so it’ll be fun to see how I can stretch my style through accessorizing! Scarves are my best friends this month
EW: I really don’t have that many wintery dresses and it’s getting pretty cold so sometimes I just want to roll out of bed and put on some leggings and a t-shirt, but it’s been really cool to wake up every morning and be reminded of how blessed I am and how much freedom I have. Every morning I am re-motivated to put on a dress and help fight for these women who have so little freedom in their life. Also because I usually just wear athletic clothes a lot of my peers and classmates have been curious in knowing why all of sudden I’ve been dressing up and it gives me an opportunity to tell them what I’m doing and why.
HCTX: If you could describe “Dressember” in one word what would it be?
KB: Advocacy.
EW: Empowering.
If you’d like to learn more about Dressember and take part in fundraising $5,000 this month check out the Dressember Facebook event at https://www.facebook.com/officialdressember and use your social media to raise awareness through the official hashtag #Dressember!