Caitlin Haggerty:

Chains: A wearable designed to bring together women who have felt the effects of gender inequality and rape culture. Wearing this jewelry will bring up necessary conversations about our society.

Over the course of human history, it has been believed that beads’ characteristics represent emotions and experience. Chains draws inspiration from this and uses different charms to symbolize experiences. For example, the third layer has 9 lip charms painted red and 1 unpainted to symbolize how 90% of rape victims do not speak up. By wearing this jewelry, women can show their pain and find comfort in others who have felt it too. There is healing in community, in empathy, in sisterhood.

Molly Rosenberg:

Chains: a wearable that unites women and aims to start conversations around rape culture and the inequality women experience in society. The project incorporates chains, symbols, and different colors; each piece of the necklace brings awareness to different parts of women's injustice in society and unites women to help find their voice.

The art of beading has played a key role in many different cultures. In African communities beads were used to protect their wearers from bad spirits and to represent emotions and experience. Chains contains six necklaces layered together at different lengths in order to create a story. Each individual necklace represents a statistic relating to the rape culture and the hard truths about its affect on women. Different laser cut symbols are assembled as the charms on each necklace; each symbol relates to the given statistic in order to help the user visualize the data. The main color used to show percentages and fractions in Chains is red which is typically a color associated with blood, heat, passion, fire, and leadership, all of which amplify the main message of the project. Women continue to feel silenced and unable to share their stories of injustice; Chains helps them gain a voice and be apart of a bigger community by understanding that they are not alone. There is healing in sharing, realizing, and understanding others' pain.

Nicole Katz:

Chains: This wearable piece is about gender inequality and rape culture in America. Through different shape and color charms, we demonstrate the truly real statics of rape culture for women. While incorporating chains, beads, symbols, and different colors this piece represents every victim and gives them a voice.

This wearable piece is a way of taking away the silence to an important topic. Millions of women in the world are silenced to a tragedy and inequality and are too afraid to speak out. We wanted to use our wearable to bring awareness of the reality and progression of a serious issue in the American society. With different colors charms being white and red, we represent the statistics. We start with the top chain which has the number 321,500 which represents the 321,500 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States. This is the top chain because it is the baseline statistic of rapes REPORTED. The next chain was the 6 women symbols, 5 white and 1 red to represent the statistic that 1 out of 6 women in America experience attempted or completed rape. This shocking statistic really shows how common rape is in our society. The next chain is 10 lips, 9 red and 1 white to represent the 90% of victims who stay silent.  This is a very important message because our main inspiration was the me too movement which encourages victims to come out of the silence. The neck chain was 9 red women and 1 white man to represent that 90% of rape victims are females. This shows the inequality not only in rape culture but in general. The next chain is 17 white red-cross symbols and 3 red symbols to show the 3/20 victims who attempt suicide. This shows the severity and results of being raped because no one's life is not worth it. The last chain is 19 red eyes and 1 white eye to show the 19/20 victims who experience PTSD as a result of being raped. The harsh reality of our necklaces hope to bring awareness to this topic and stop tragedies and inequalities from happening