Fashion show brings awareness to human traffiking

By Chelsea Underwood
May 5th, 2010
Section: Arts & Entertainment

 

Sydney Hunter rips off the saran wrap covering her body during the "Mail Order Bride" walk. Photo credit Chelsea Underwood/staff reporter.

Each year an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 human beings are bought, sold, or forced across the world’s borders. The U.S. government estimates that 50,000 women and children are trafficked each year into the United States.

LA is one of the top three points of entry into the country for victims of slavery and trafficking. About 10,000 women are held in underground brothels in LA. This does not include, however, the thousands of women and children being forced into domestic work and sweatshops.

Wanda Pathomrit, resident advisor, had heard about Kenneth Ng’s website promoting sex tourism in Thailand and wanted to do something about it.

“I was devastated by this news to learn that an educator is promoting degrading practices objectifying women,” said Pathomrit.

“Women within the sex tourism industry are predominately the victims of human trafficking — they are forced to enter into the trade of prostitution due to the limited choices to survive.”

In order to raise awareness about human trafficking, Pathomrit and CSUN’s Resident Advisor’s put together a fashion show entitled “The S.E.C.R.E.T. Project.”

The acronym “S.E.C.R.E.T” stands for “Students Empowering Communities’ Rights Ending Trafficking” of sex and labor. The event took place on Friday, April 30 in the multi-purpose room of the new campus housing community center.

The evening started off with two spoken word artists, Mark Chase and Diana Bui. Each spoke about the terror of human trafficking and the affects it can cause on women.

Chase’s poem entitled “He Will Probably Keep Going” repeated the line “and he’ll probably keep going” and talked about how women don’t find themselves beautiful because of what they have gone through and the way they are treated.

Chase says in his poem, “I hope you can hear me, because I think you’re beautiful.”

The first walk down the lit “runway” was the inequality walk. It represented how the women are treated unequally and mistreated because they don’t have government papers.  The next walk was titled the “militarism walk.”

“This walk focuses on how military presence in different countries increases human trafficking. The runway features five women from different ethnic backgrounds,” said Pathomrit.

Then there was the “mail order bride” walk. Mail order brides are shipped off to single American men who buy them over the Internet from far away countries. This walk featured a video of a man ordering a bride off the Internet, projected on a screen on the wall.

This is a legal form of trafficking women from third world countries, said Pathomrit.

“Every time he clicks the mouse, a woman walks out onto the runway with a price on her body and description about her characteristics.”

The women were wrapped in plastic to show that they were being shipped and each had their own barcode. Once they got to the end of the runway, they ripped the plastic off, unveiling signs that said things such as “money can’t buy my love” and “we are afflicted by an epidemic of human violence.”

Lastly there was the “violence walk” in which the RAs donned bruises and cuts in order to portray the violence that women go through. At the end, audience members were given letters from real women who suffered and survived human trafficking. Each letter also gave information on how to support the cause.

The fashion show was intended to not only raise awareness about human trafficking, but was an “active oppression reduction program,” said the event’s invite.

“I want people to see that human trafficking affects all types of people all over the world, including the United States,” said Nicki Viso, R.A.

“Taking advantage of people like that is just plain heartless.”

Pathmorit had a similar attitude towards what she wanted the residents to take away from the show.

“I want students to be aware about the issue of human trafficking affecting our society. I want students to realize that when you are not aware, we are perpetuating the oppression. I want students to leave my program feeling empowered by their knowledge,” she said.

Pathmorit had wanted to do this kind of a program before but it never worked out until now.

“I felt it was a perfect opportunity to expose the event to my residents… The dorm was an appropriate place to present my program in order to reach out to new incoming young freshmen students who represent the future of our generation,” she said.

“I wanted to make a personal impact to empower myself and the student body to stand for equality.”

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  • Tristan

    A professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, Nicole Constable, has published the results of her exhaustive two-year study of international relationships fomented by the internet, the women of which are referred to derogatorily by some as “mail order brides”.

    Professor Constable interviewed hundreds of American men, Filipina women and Chinese women, American and foreign NGOs, American and foreign women’s rights groups, government officials and last but certainly not least she interviewed the owners of many international dating companies.

    The results are contained in a book available on Amazon.com entitled “Romance on a Global Stage”. It was published in 2003. Everyone interested in this subject should buy and read this book.

    Professor Constable is an academic. She is not a politician. She is an avowed feminist and at times even considers herself a radical feminist. Here are some quotes from the book:

    “Men and their perspectives, I learned, are – like the women – often misunderstood or glossed in stark and stereotypical terms.”

    “I have come to see the men involved in correspondence relationships as a very diverse group of people; many are decent and well-intentioned human beings who have learned a great deal in the process of their relationships.”

    “Many went to great lengths to ensure their partner’s comfort and happiness in the United States.”

    “Troubling to some critics is that many women who opt to marry US men express a preference to remain at home and not to work if there is no financial incentive to do so, and a willingness to define themselves primarily as wives and mothers.”

    “Mail order brides are often depicted as buying into images of their own subservience and marrying out of economic depression. These views are seriously flawed for their orientalist, essentializing and universalizing tendencies, which reflect many now-outdated feminist views of the 1970s.”

    “Anti-trafficking NGOs often include mail order brides among the ranks of trafficked women. Definitions of mail order brides, as discussed below, are often so broad as to be meaningless.”

    “Women may quite literally put their best face forward, but the market metaphor [that women are being sold] should not be taken literally in this context. Would this metaphor be applied to western women and men who use dating services or place personal ads, or does it reflect more pejorative assumptions about foreign or Third World women?”

    “Assuming that Asian women are objects who are bought and sold…is not only a bad feminist argument, but it is one that fits with the most demeaning and essentializing images of mail order brides. Such images rob women of their ability to express intelligence, resistance, creativity, independence, dignity and strength.”

    “Overall I argue that women involved in correspondence relationships are not merely pawns of global political economy or the victims of sexual exploitation, nor are men simply the agents of western sexual imperialism.”

  • Maria

    This event is outrageous and slanderous. I am a Colombian woman who married my American husband I met on the internet. We met the same way American women meet American men. But for some reason we experience extreme racial and ethnic prejudice by American women who think that it is okay if they meet men this way but if I meet a man this way I am used or abused.

    They like to patronize women like me and objectify me by suggesting I am so helpless I cannot make my own decisions about who to meet, date and marry. They think they are superior to me because I am a foreigner.

    I have a masters degree, and I speak three languages fluently. How many of the American women hold this event can claim the same? How many of them HAVE EVER MET an international couple?

    This is the worst sort of witch hunting I have ever experienced, and even though I am proud of my new country, the United States, when I see this kind of ignorance and prejudice I am ashamed.

  • David

    That is a creative way to bring awareness onto the subject, maybe it can become more mainstream and used in other runway shows. Good article chelsea!