To start, can you give us a short summary of your book and what inspired you to write it?

I was deluged with messages from parents who were panicked about their daughters' "inappropriate" clothes and selfies. Since I’m an expert on slut-shaming—the experience of a woman being negatively judged because of her actual or perceived sexual behavior or appearance—parents figured I could help advise them on what to tell their daughters about how they “should” dress without making them feel ashamed.

One mom said to me, “You’re a feminist. Aren’t you horrified that so many young women are objectifying themselves?” Another direct-messaged me, “I keep telling my daughter to change her outfit and delete her bikini selfies, but she won’t listen. What should I do?” I realized the only way I could be of help to the parents was to speak with young women to find out what was going on. 

I ended up spending six years speaking with young women around the US, ages 14-30. They told me they aren’t trying to be sexy and don’t think of their attire as having anything to do with sex. They’re just standing up for themselves.

 Girls lose their bodily autonomy at a young age with gendered school dress codes that cause them to be removed from the classroom over infractions such as wearing a top that exposes bra straps. Teenagers and young women suffer from the proliferation of so-called revenge porn and deepfakes, which are a form of image-based sexual abuse and are facilitated by tech companies that are doing next to nothing to stop it. Not to mention, we still victim-blame after sexual assault and harassment. Women are fed up with being called sluts for doing nothing wrong and being held responsible for others’ inability to keep their eyes and hands off their bodies, and they’ve decided to wear what they want.

It became clear to me that parents anxious about their daughters looking “inappropriate” should redirect their concern. The real problem is not what young women wear but the rampant sexual objectification and violation of bodily autonomy they face every day, in real life and online. 

Many women have been taught from a young age to dress and present themselves in ways that minimize unwanted attention. How can we begin to unlearn these messages and embrace self-expression without fear of judgment?

When they wear the clothes they want—even if other people say they look “inappropriate”—young people are taking a stand for themselves and against three pillars of nonconsensual sexualization that shape their daily lives:

• Gendered dress codes, which allow teachers and administrators to scrutinize and comment on girls’ bodies;
• Nonconsensual sharing of intimate images (“revenge porn” and “deepfakes”), which portray girls and women as sexual objects deserving of public humiliation;
• The aftermath of sexual harassment and assault, when victims are told—still today, even after #MeToo—that they were “asking for it.”

There’s nothing wrong with taking and sharing intimate pictures. There’s nothing wrong with feeling good about one’s body. Everyone should be able to stand up for themselves, experience a sense of bodily autonomy, and shape and share their image on their own terms.

Conversations around bodily autonomy and self-image are often centered on younger generations, but women in midlife and beyond also face scrutiny over how they present themselves. How do you see ageism intersecting with the issues you discuss in your book?

As we experience gendered ageism—which I am dealing with myself—the concept of what “sexy” means shifts. But the pressure is still there. It doesn’t evaporate; it morphs.

At the same time, all of us, regardless of age, are at risk of being sexualized against our will. We are all at risk of having our face digitally attached to a sexually explicit image or video, and or being harassed or assaulted. The reality is that you’re never too old to be slut-shamed.

Women are often expected to “dress their age.” What are your thoughts on this expectation, and how can we break free from it?

When you're younger, the pressure is to look sexy, to look hot. As you get older, and you age out of those pressures and expectations, you're still supposed to conform to a very narrow set of rules and guidelines that are never really spelled out what you're supposed to look like physically.

In the last few years, we’ve seen well-known women such as Dr. Jill Biden, Dolly Parton, and Diane Keaton criticized publicly for not “dressing their age.” But it’s really a trap, and we can never win, as women are also mocked for looking old if they don’t dye their gray hair. And older women of color, especially Black, Latina, and Indigenous women, pay a heavy price as a result of the ugly stereotype that women of color are hypersexual. So when we talk about what is “appropriate,” we need to keep in mind that “appropriateness” means different things depending on who you are. We should just banish the word “appropriate” when talking about appearance.

The best course of action is to never apologize for our look. Own it—just as younger women do—and say, “This is who I am. This is what I decided to wear today. Deal with it.”

Lingerie has often been designed and marketed with the gaze of others in mind, but at DOUBL we say we're creating bras for the wearer, not the watcher. How do you see the conversation around bodily autonomy and self-expression shaping the future of the bra industry?

Young women tell me repeatedly that most of the time, they dress for themselves to feel a sense of ownership over their appearance, and women in midlife and older feel the same way! Maybe your idea of “owning” your body looks different from the way a woman of a different generation may “own” her body, but all of us deserve the right to make decisions over our bodies.

I love that DOUBL recognizes that women wear bras for themselves first and foremost. I hope the rest of the industry—and, frankly, the rest of the culture—learns from this example. Let’s reject the idea that we must conform to a toxic cultural expectation of what a woman “should” look like and show up feeling good about ourselves. We all deserve that.