Columbia’s Mattress Girl and the Future of Rape Protest

Emma Sulkowicz, graduate of Columbia University, will forever be dubbed “Mattress Girl” because she survived rape and told her story by carrying her mattress. An act that she very well continued into her graduation ceremony and in which the Dean refused to shake her hand. The mattress is her cross that she bears over her shoulder — it’s weight, the ridicule it attracts, and the ignorant that question her actions of that night attempt to overwhelm her. Yet she walks into society, protesting, where her voice is intended to be silenced. However, the resurrection is that of today and future survivors and their voices. By bearing her mattress, Emma Sulkowicz encourages women to have their justified voices of every kind heard in the society that deems them to be responsible for the actions they ‘attracted.’ She is revolutionary in the fact that she is encouraging a new type of protest against rape that is vocal rather than sharing moments of silence at a vigil. By carrying her symbol of oppression, Emma is breaking the sound barrier […] to break down the silence” as stated by Zorica Mrsevic and making herself visible, vulnerable, and heard. By stepping into society as the “Mattress Girl” she is demanding that her concerns be taken into account. She refuses to go back into the role of what a victim is deemed to be: silent, scared, and small. Emma is embracing all that she is as a survivor: loud, brave, and tall. She is encouraging that all survivors not be shunned into silence and the darkness with their mattresses, but rather become their own Lady Justices’ and present their key piece of evidence to the public. By bringing forth proof of the crime to society, Emma is disregarding the importance of keeping the evidence preserved, but upholding the importance of recognition in a survivor’s account. It is her way of inviting the public to confront the reality of what survivors of rape endure.

In today’s society statements are not believed, paper signs are easily ignored as they are taken down, and chants at a public setting are easily drowned out. Consistent and large forms of protest, to attract acknowledgement, are now required to receive any form of recognition yet when the survivors are made contact with — it is only to ask them to end the ‘disruption’ their creative forms of protest makes. Yet where is this same contact made with the aggressor? Why is it that in this society when a survivor speaks up that they are easily dismissed and attempted to be, if not, shunned into darkness? It is almost insensitive that survivors are pushed to perform these types of protests, because their word is not taken into account, to begin any type of acknowledgement and belief in the survivor’s story. It is infuriating that one is pushed to become visible if not made visible and vulnerable by media slandering their very being. It is almost as if performing a form of creative protesting finally validates their statement and even then members of society decide to turn their ear and return to a dark room of ignorance and refusal of acknowledgement.

Emma Sulkowicz is more than her role as “Mattress Girl” she is a leader in the revolution expressing oppression in different forms. She is more than a survivor — she remains the same intelligent woman that was accepted to attend Columbia University — an institution that left her in the dark when she most needed light and justice to guide her.