Photos of UI women's self-defense weapons hit a nerve

Whistles. Brass knuckles. Cans of mace.

A University of Iowa art student's photo series of women and the things they carry to protect themselves against sexual assault has gone viral online. News about it on BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post attracted more than a million page views by Wednesday, a week after the actress Zooey Deschanel posted a link on her website HelloGiggles. The story showed up in the Italian edition of Vanity Fair.

"It's been pretty crazy," said the artist, Taylor Yocom, 22, who will graduate Saturday with a degree in photography. "I gave a TV interview during my last week of classes."

The Des Moines native and Roosevelt High School grad said the idea for the project came to her during a class discussion in February 2014, following several reports about sexual assaults that had occurred in Iowa City taxis.

"We were just frustrated," Yocom recalled. "If you're at a party and then you go home alone, the taxis should be safe. And if they aren't, what's your next line of defense?"

Some her female classmates mentioned the things they carried for protection — a habit that had never occurred to the men in the class.

"There was definitely an imbalance about who felt vulnerable," Yocom said.

So she decided to do something about it. She shot stark, black-and-white portraits of 15 young women on campus and then about 15 more last fall on downtown's Ped Mall. The subjects held up their protective devices and stared straight at the camera.

Becky Oberhauser, a marketing senior from Algonquin, Ill., showed off the rape whistle she received as a freebie from her residence hall.

Breona Carroll, a Des Moines native and East High School grad, held up a can of mace in a leopard-print holster she bought at a campus bookstore. She is black and said she bought it before joining various protests, including one in Ferguson, Mo.

"It wasn't for the protesters. It was actually for the police," the journalism major said. "I decided I'd feel safer."

Carroll has known Yocom since their high school days and admires her artistic vision, especially with this latest project.

"The fact that she noticed it and turned it into art is really a beautiful thing," she said.

But Yocom figured it was such a simple idea that someone must have done it already. Maybe, maybe not — but it struck a fresh nerve when she hung up the photos last year for an art class. A woman she barely knew told her how powerful the images were and encouraged her to develop the show further. Some male friends offered support when she posted the photos on Facebook.

"When I started the project, I'd never heard of my friends having to use this stuff. I'd never talked about this actually happening," said Yocom.

Yocom herself had a brief run-in shortly after she started the project. A man approached her on the sidewalk and touched her waist before she fired "a warning shot" from the can of mace her mom had sent her several years before. The guy ran away.

Like many schools, the University of Iowa has struggled to crack down on sexual assaults on and around campus. Outgoing President Sally Mason's administration has taken heat over the past few years for decisions that may have hampered investigations, especially when the alleged perpetrators were athletes.

But Yocom has seen progress. Campuswide alerts about reported attacks are more timely now, and "the language is better," she said, with "less victim-blaming" and more suggestions about how to get help.

One of the advantages of her photo projects, she added, is that she "can identify the issue without pointing any fingers."

But the issue is complicated. Among a flood of online comments this week, critics have accused her of fear-mongering or parroting false statistics. (One in five women has been sexually assaulted during her college years, President Barack Obama said at a White House event in September, where he rolled out the "It's On Us" campaign against campus violence.)

Other critics said Yocom should encourage young women to toss out their whistles and mace in favor of guns.

"I definitely need to change my artist's statement," she said. "This isn't a how-to guide. I'm just trying to depict the sad reality."

Yocom hopes to expose that reality at other colleges and universities. She'd like to take her exhibition to other campuses and shoot portraits of more women. She might publish a book.

In the meantime, her photos are on display through the end of the month at Public Space One in Iowa City — and, now, lots of galleries online.