Being a female college student is sometimes intimidating. Going to college parties, walking out to our cars at night or even going downtown are all potentially unsafe situations we face on a daily basis. 

But what if there were something that let us feel safer without anyone else knowing? Well, Anti-Rape Wear owners Ruth and Yuval have made that possible by creating a line of anti-rape underwear and running clothes specifically for women. 

The last names of the owners have been kept confidential for safety reasons. Due to the sensitive nature of the product and early stage of product development, their personal information will not be mentioned. 

A few years ago, Yuval saw a news story about a teenaged girl who was raped. During the attack, the rapist removed his victim’s clothing and completed the rape in just a few minutes. 

After hearing this story, Yuval came up with an idea to create hard-to-remove clothing, thinking it may slow down rapists, allowing for more time during which someone nearby might come to the victim’s aid or giving more time for the victim to get away. Maybe then, other cases like the one Yuval saw on TV could be prevented. 

Yuval spent years searching for the perfect fabric for her anti-rape clothing. She worked with several designers to come up with conceptual prototypes that are now featured on the AR Wear campaign page on Indiegogo. 

Indiegogo is a site that allows companies such as AR Wear to campaign for their product in order to gain both financial support and assurance that other people believe in their line. 

The main challenge of the AR Wear products was finding a way to make garments comfortable and assault resistant. This meant creating something difficult for someone else to remove by cutting, tearing or pulling the garment off the victim.

Yuval was not able to find a specific material to fit the requirements she had in mind, so the solution was to strengthen other elements of the garment by using an innovative skeletal structure. The waist, thighs and central panels are crafted with specially designed, cut-resistant straps and webbing. And once the garment has been put on, there is a unique locking device located on the side. This device makes it nearly impossible for an attacker to take it off of the wearer. 

About a year ago, Yuval reached out to Ruth, a family friend, in the hopes of getting help moving the project forward. These efforts included crowd-funding as a means to assess market interest for AR Wear and raising funds to finalize production-ready prototypes. 

Yuval went to Ruth because of her connection to the product. Ruth has been subjected to two attempted rapes, one at 18 and the other in her late twenties. In both cases, delays prevented the assaults from becoming completed rapes.

In the first case, Ruth was able to fight off her attacker until he heard noises nearby, so he broke off the attack. In the second case, Ruth’s attacker had one hand clenched tightly around her throat while the other hand was able to yank off her tight jeans and underwear in one fluid motion.

Luckily, during this attack, she screamed and her attacker ran off. Being involved in a project that could potentially prevent attacks such as the ones she had been through made this project something Ruth wanted to participate in. 

“Once I read studies showing that resistance to an attack does not statistically increase the overall physical violence and results in less completed rapes, I was committed to the project,” Ruth said. 

AR Wear was officially announced to the public on Oct.13, when the Indiegogo Campaign went live. 

“We decided to do crowd-funding [through Indiegogo] both to raise money to finalize production-ready prototypes and to see if the product line is wanted by the public,” Ruth said. “We recently passed our funding goal of $50,000 with more than 2,100 funders and 47,000 Facebook likes on our campaign page as of right now.”

In the future, AR Wear hopes to offer a wide range of wearable items, which will include underwear, running shorts and traveling shorts that are suitable for different situations and the styles of individual wearers. 

Ruth said she expects that online sales will be their first platform, but she would like to explore other outlets at the appropriate time. 

“We also hope to be able to partner with organizations that serve groups at risk, so that there may be options to provide garments to people who couldn’t afford to buy on their own,” she said. 

As of now there is not a set price for AR Wear products. Ruth said she is just looking forward to finalizing production-ready prototypes. 

AR Wear has received negative feedback since its launch on Indiegogo, and in response to that feedback, Ruth has released the following statement: 

We acknowledge and respect everyone’s right to their opinions, but we do not use victim blaming or rape myths in our campaign, nor do we place the responsibility for ending rape on women or assume that the only type of rape is stranger rape.  We do not claim that our product line will prevent all rapes and our project does not undermine efforts to educate the public and change rape culture. It offers another tool of defense that might work in some cases of assault. Providing a new option for protection from sexual assault is not victim blaming, nor does it perpetuate rape myths. We are sorry that some disagree.

Charles Bost, UNC Wilmington detective and crime analyst offered his opinion in response to the Indiegogo campaign.

“I have watched the [campaign] video and think that this is a good ‘second’ layer of protection,” he said. “But I don’t think that it replaces the need to follow common sense precautions in reducing the possibility of a person being a victim of rape, which would be my primary concern about this product.” 

Like AR Wear on Facebook and help send additional funds to their campaign. Who knows? This product could be life-changing.