Slap On The Wrist
girli x Cheer Up Luv — using music to connect survivor experience, advocacy, and wider understanding of VAWG
Some messages land because they’re explained. Others land because they’re felt.
Slap On The Wrist by girli uses music to do what statistics and headlines often can’t - translate lived experience into something people recognise in their bodies. The tension, the vigilance, the anger, the exhaustion. The sense of being blamed, dismissed, or quietly told to move on.
In collaboration with Cheer Up Luv, this project draws on real survivor experiences to connect music, advocacy, and care. The video grounds the song in reality. Its scenes are based on real survivor testimonies, set in familiar places and everyday moments. Alongside this, the facts are made explicit: 1 in 4 women in the UK have been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16. In 2024, 71,227 rapes were recorded by police - yet charges were brought in just 2.7% of cases, meaning fewer than 3 in 100 resulted in someone being charged that same year.
What makes this powerful is how these elements work together. The music carries emotion. The visuals hold attention without sensationalising harm. The statistics anchor everything in reality. For women and survivors, this can feel like recognition - a reflection of experiences too often minimised. For the wider public, it creates understanding where distance or disbelief might otherwise sit.
The video remains grounded and considered throughout, using clarity rather than shock to underline how normalised both violence and impunity have become.
At Make Yourself Heard, we value work that tells the truth with care - and that uses creativity to widen understanding, not flatten it. This project shows how music can connect individual experience to collective reality, and why that connection matters.
This is art that speaks beyond its audience. And insists these stories be taken seriously.
