My little black dress does not mean yes is a movement that began when addressing the idea that a woman can indirectly say “yes” to sexual advances not from her own verbal affirmation but by the things that she is wearing. In this collection we see the story of two different women. One adult woman who is preparing for a date and is admiring how she looks. She goes on the date and has a wonderful time and thinks that this man may be her future husband until he walks her to her car and takes advantage of her based on what he thought she was saying but what she had chosen to wear. The second poem is from the perspective of a college student. Beginning with being dropped off by her very worried mother and ending with her first frat party. She soon realizes that she doesn’t know it all. These poems do not bash anyone; they simply address an ongoing problem from the perspective of a more mature woman and a teenager to help us realize that this is a problem at any age.
My Little Black Dress Does Not Mean Yes
- My Little Black Dress I stand fully clothed and yet exposed. I stand fully aware and yet full of stupidity. I stand fully a woman and yet I feel like a child. I stand fully dressed in black and yet I am naked. I had a black dress that I used to wear all the time, a black dress that I thought was actually mine. A black dress that when I looked in the mirror I thought that I was beautiful, but then I realized… I realized that what my black dress was saying to me, it was not saying to others. Date night. I stepped outside in my little black dress I have my purse in one hand my keys in the other, my heels were high and my face was fabulous. My hair was as curly and as beautiful as ever. I smelled like lavender blowing in the summer fields. And I walk to my car and I turned on the radio to my favorite station and I bob my head to my favorite song. And I drove in my little black dress. And I arrived in my little black dress.