Going on a Date (2025)

Filmed, scored, and edited by Kaia King-Hall.

Going on a Date represents the balance between physically and emotionally protecting yourself, while remaining alluring and desirable to the male gaze. Women take exhaustive steps in order to protect themselves from harm such as carrying pepper spray, wearing particular clothes, and having premeditated lies to get out of conversations or potentially dangerous scenarios. I take such precautions in my daily life, but especially before going on a date with a new romantic interest. The questions I begin to ask myself are a concern for my safety, but also of what might be expected of me. How can I protect myself while remaining as desirable as possible? Is it too much or too little? Do I seem too eager or unexciting? Through the use of meticulous editing, jarring sounds, and uncanny colors, I create an anxiety inducing experience that represents the hours leading up to a date.

The video begins with me walking into frame before I abruptly take my pants off, lingerie hanging in the background as a sign of chaos, or…fun? The font and colors used for the title card are eye candy, seductive, but it is immediately followed by an alarming noise (and a cheeky little blood splatter), something you might hear when there's an emergency. There is only a brief glimpse of my face as I continue taking off my pants before I proceed to put on forty-six pairs of underwear. One frame turns into two, two into three, all the way up to eleven. Acutely cropped and fast paced, there's not much space to breathe. As the pairs of underwear on my body increase, so does the pace of the short, tight breath heard amongst the continuing alarm and eerie synthesizer. For every lacy, hardware embedded thong to pull you in, there is a worn out, 100% cotton pair of boyshorts to keep you away. Despite the pain I was in while having forty-six pairs of underwear on, I’m still swinging my hips and bouncing around, because getting dressed up and going on dates is supposed to be fun, right?