THOUGHT-PROVOKING OR JUST THOUGHTLESSLY PROVOCATIVE?

Am I just too fussy, or is this trend of using female undergarments to "raise awareness" a little misguided?

I walked past a "Panty Line Project" today on campus that is meant to draw attention to sexual assault. As the name suggests, it was a bunch of women's underwear on a clothesline. I looked at it for a moment — and at the earnest young students behind the brochure-filled table — and walked away feeling a bit queasy. What, exactly, do underwear — or their word, "panties" — have to do with rape? I guess someone was thinking, "Underwear contain the genitals and the genitals are involved in rape, so let's use underwear as a symbol." Deep thinking, there.

But, come on. Are all the young college men passing this display of intimate apparel going to stop and think, "Hey! Rape is really horrible!" Or are they just going to snicker and experience that feeling they get when they walk by a Victoria's Secret window?

Underwear, especially women's, is so sexualized in our culture (not without reason) that when you see it, you tend to think sex, not sexual assault. Romance, not rape. And those aren't thoughts that you really want passing through someone's head in the context of violence, are they?

Then there's the use of the word "panties," which is probably even more highly sexualized than the garment itself — the way that it's ubiquitous in porn, the way that it sounds kind of icky on the lips of grown men as though they're talking about little girls, the diminutive, dainty "-ies," the infantilizing, fragile image it creates of women in certain contexts. I'm not opposed to all uses of this word. I'm just saying there's a time and a place and a way of saying it. And a display about rape ain't it.

The Panty Line Project reminded me of the recent "project" that stretched a line of colorful bras across the river in an attempt to raise awareness about breast cancer. I had the same feeling about that. What do sexy bras have to do with women dying of breast cancer? Does seeing a lingerie display really make people stop and think about the tragedy of cancer? What does the fact that a bra contains the breast have to do with anything? If we wanted to raise awareness about brain cancer, would we put up a bunch of hats, just because they're a garment associated with the head? If we wanted to raise awareness about a leg disorder, would we put up a bunch of pants? Or is it really just the sexualized nature of the bra that we're relying on here? The built-in provocativeness of it? And isn't the reaction you thereby provoke consequently kind of cheap? Bras are essentially about boobs. And breast cancer is only superficially so. Breast cancer is about life and death.

And more to the point, isn't there kind of an inherent sexism in all this? I mean, if we wanted to raise awareness about testicular cancer, would we put up a bunch of sexy men's underwear? Or if we wanted to raise awareness about priests assaulting little boys, how about a row of little-kid "undies"? Um, I don't think so. That would be freakin' creepy. So why is it deemed OK, or even clever, to use sexy undergarments to draw attention to deadly serious issues involving women? (Employing the tactics of the awareness-raisers, I include some gratuitous images of underwear to grab your attention and make you think seriously about this question.)