Curvy Kate illustrates irony by taking advantage of statement on rape culture
I’m sure most of you have seen it. I know I shared it. It’s everywhere. Since 18 year-old artist Rosea Lake (aka Rosea Posey) decided, two weeks ago, to share it on Tumblr “Judgements”, which she shot a year ago as part of a high-school project, has gone (as the kids say) viral attracting more than 270,000 comments to Lake’s Tumblr page. The photo showing 10 words written on the leg of a model, each corresponding to a skirt length and running the gamut from “matronly” to “whore” has clearly struck a nerve.
I’m sure very few of you have seen this: Yesterday a UK lingerie company posted a new ad. It was up for only a couple of hours and attracted hundreds of comments to Curvy Kate’s Facebook page. The photo showing 6 words written on the leg of a model, each (as a caption tells us) corresponding to a skirt length and running the gamut from “prudish” to “daring” has also struck a nerve.
Any guesses as to why?
Now, Curvy Kate’s actions were shady to say the least but I think there’s something bigger to look at here. Lake has described her piece as being about slut-shaming and I think it follows from there that we’re talking about rape culture and the idea of “asking for it”. We talk about how rape is often about power, one person asserting/abusing their position over someone who has less strength, status or control. A company (now, I know Curvy Kate is no Microsoft but still…) very blatantly using the idea of a teenager for their own financial gain sounds ideologically similar.
I will stop now and say that I really detest when people try to attach the term “rape” to things that aren’t rape so I want to be clear and say that I’m not doing that. But I have been talking a bunch lately about bullying and rape culture and the correlation between the two. I stand by my theory that rape culture is a by-product of people being selfish bullies who don’t think of the world beyond how it affects them. I truly believe that if you bully you are contributing to rape culture and I believe that a company yoinking the work of a teenager presumably because they don’t think anyone will notice or fight back is an act of bullying. I think we can’t ignore the fact that Curvy Kate didn’t just do something that was ethically inappropriate, they did something that spit in the face of the work they ripped off. Rosea Lake spoke out against rape culture and Curvy Kate twisted and perverted her work in what I see as an act that is a clear illustration of rape culture.
I could rant about this some more, but a whole lot of people beat me to the punch and, as you’ll notice, the caption says the ad has disappeared. The internet is a big place and that place is full of people who had seen Lake’s piece first (I told you it’s everywhere!) and before I even knew any of this had happened they jumped in and ripped folks at Curvy Kate a new one leading to the removal of the ad and apologies.
I’ll leave you with this: Rape culture, bullying, slut-shaming, none of it will go away if we (and by “we” I mean humans) don’t remember to respect each other all the time. Not when we think people are looking. Not when we have to. Not when there’s something in it for us. Not even just when it’s easy. All the time. No matter how you slice it, what happened here was disrespect- there was no crediting of the artist, no payment to her. What happened here is part of the problem.
