“Don’t dress like a whore,” the mayor’s niece, Krista Ford, has advised Toronto women who fear sexual assault. Going by her former Lingerie Football League uniform, she can reasonably be regarded as a charcoal pot calling us a vast population of black kettles.

“Stay alert, walk tall, carry mace, take self-defence classes & don’t dress like a whore,” was her Twitter wisdom after police held a news conference Wednesday about six recent sexual assaults in the west end — young women who were attacked from behind as they walked at night.

These women are shattered, terrified, afraid to go outside or live inside.

“We are always concerned this could escalate,” Det. Const. Phil Campbell said of the attacks, and police don’t say that lightly. It will give the victims immense cheer to think back on the clothes that were torn from them, now in a police evidence locker, and wonder if they blared, “Asking for it!”

And it will embolden the attacker(s) as well, who know a target when they see one, and it isn’t “whore” — it’s “female” or “little girl” or pretty much anyone who happens along. Thanks, Ms Ford, who used the hashtags #DontBeAVictim and #StreetSmart, and not ironically, either.

We’ve already had the disastrous police Const. Michael Sanguinetti warning last year against rape victim sluttishness, and worldwide SlutWalks to protest this kind of attitude. And now we have a woman saying it. If the Fords are Canada’s Kardashians, is it Krista or Mayor Rob who is their hood ornament?

Aside from the fact that Mace is a restricted weapon — and why hand a rapist a weapon he could use against you? — I don’t see where Ford keeps her spray can. I am studying the mauve satin bra and laced-up knickers, garters and ruffled chokers this young woman used to wear as a linebacker for Toronto Triumph, and the corset-type tops she wears for every day.

Perhaps she is hiding it in her hair, under a volume-expanding Bumpit, but it must be a very small can.

I walked down Queens Quay Thursday and saw many women dressed in the overtly sexual way that is fashionable right now: sleek, body-hugging, revealing and confident. Yes, this style may be “normalizing the marginal,” as theorists say about the “porning” of North American popular culture.

But every fashion era aims for this in its own way, even the semi-hostile corsetry of the Mad Men era and the bicycling costumes (pants!) of the 1890s. At one time, a flash of an ankle was overtly sexual, making all women whose feet were still attached to their legs unable to walk without fear of attack.

Now it’s big pneumatic breasts and resultant cleavage (possible Mace storage site?).

Ford calls it “whoreish” but it’s just the clothing of its time. I defend Ford’s right to dress like a Texas train wreck. If she were raped, I’d blame the rapist and hope police and prosecutors would, too.

Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, a brigadier in the ongoing U.S. war against women, has said that “legitimate rape” victims don’t get pregnant, the female body having its own way of repelling ill-favoured sperm. The inference is that if you do get pregnant after rape, you weren’t actually raped.

And Ford, the Honey Boo Boo of the Ford family, is saying a variant of this. (Honey Boo Boo, a 7-year-old Georgia beauty contestant, has her own show on The Learning Channel.) She hasn’t thought this through. Does any Ford ever think things through? No, they’re spontaneity’s plaything. They’re off the cuff, they’re makeshift, they’re half-baked. This is simply part of their lack of charm.

Her father, Councillor Doug Ford, wasn’t crazy about Krista’s lingerie football thing, with teams like Philadelphia Passion, Orlando Fantasy and Cleveland Crush. I mean, imagine the fans in the stands, their hands never visible.

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But he said, and I praise him for this, “I always support my kids in any endeavour they get involved in.” Does he support her in her comments on rape? Apparently not, as Krista Ford said later in one of those half-hearted “if” I-offended-anyone apologies. “It’s important that the public knows that my comments do not reflect my family’s beliefs.” Good to know.

hmallick@thestar.ca