Was my female coworker being an idiot by wearing a tank top all day? I am a social worker with public health expertise.
I (26M) work for a very large humanitarian organization. Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of working overseas with a woman who I affectionately call Eri (38F). Eri is ethnically South Korean with a Japanese background, and she comes from Australia. She's got thick hair bangs and long black hair and honestly she looks like an anime girl. I do wish to soon pursue a relationship with her.
On one particular day this month, it was really humid and hot outside, and we spent the entire day in a poorly-ventilated non-air-conditioned building. Eri got really sweaty early on in the day, so she took her shirt off and stripped down to her jeans and a very low-cut spaghetti strap tank top. The tank top did not even cover her midriff. It was a high-stress, emotionally intense day. After Eri stripped down to her tank top, some men did touch her (not on her chest but they did touch her bare shoulders and the skin of her back, and I don’t think anybody wanted to touch her in a sexual manner because she was sweating so much), and at one point, after she lost her temper and shoved a man with her hands, that guy grabbed her shoulder and yanked her tank top aggressively and I had to intervene. She was yelling at the man and she was crying by this point, and I grabbed her arm and tried tugging her away but she was set on having her word, so I had to physically pick her up by her torso and just move her several feet away from the guy who touched her clothes. After I put her down, she bent down and hugged herself and she started sobbing. For several hours, she couldn't stop crying. A little boy tugged her ponytail at one point, not really to antagonize her but just playfully, and she thought somebody was trying to attack her so she just collapsed onto her knees, bawling. But for those hours, however scared she was, she didn't put her shirt back on and she just chose to remain vulnerable in her tank top. She would cover her chest with her arms or grab her shoulders with her hands so I got the feeling that she felt exposed, but she never thought to put her shirt back on.
Also, Eri would sometimes pull her tank top up to wipe her sweat and tears off her face and neck but she would get angry and curse at us through her tears when we would look at her bare skin.