Why Chanel Contos wears her anger with a smile

Chanel Contos never set out to spark a national movement. 

The Teach Us Consent founder was still in her early twenties when she took to social media to ask if anyone had been sexually assaulted while at school. 

The response was immediate and overwhelming. It propelled Contos into the global spotlight, triggered a national conversation and led to mandatory consent education in Australian schools.

“My intention when I posted on Instagram was to get my old school and the nearby schools that I kind of grew up socialising with to start teaching consent education earlier and better,” Contos tells Helen McCabe as part of FW’s Too Much podcast.

Image credit: Chanel Contos

“I had no idea that it would go Australia-wide, let alone global. It was really just a snowball effect. But I think testament to how relatable this issue was to so many, even outside my immediate community.” 

Contos does not consider her action as brave – she instead views it as disruptive, as coming from a deep well of anger. 

“I feel like I probably could have thrown some things,” she says. “It was a slow build-up [to making the post] … friends and I were sharing stories and we basically had unlimited stories to share of men that we knew who had sexually assaulted women. The final moment of posting on Instagram was very much fueled by anger”. 

“I wasn’t just highlighting a problem, but I had a solution.”

Contos recalls how surprised she was when the media first reached out to her about the post. 

“It was sink or swim,” she says of her first media appearances. “I didn’t think … [I’d all of a sudden] be talking about this on live TV tomorrow morning and letting my parents know that I’d been sexually assaulted.”

Despite the initial shock, Contos says her decision to engage with the media was very purposeful. 

“I took media calls at 2am and then 5am the same day. I was just like, ‘I’m just gonna do this’,” she says.

“I was so motivated by the fact that I wasn’t just highlighting a problem, but I had a solution that I knew from my studies worked. And there was no reason that that solution couldn’t be implemented into a country that has one of the best education infrastructure in the world.”

Looking back Contos now sees how she was also fuelled by anger. 

“I think I am really angry underneath, like there is anger, and anger does drive me, and I think injustice is my main motivator,” she says. “I am pretty much always really angry with a smile on my face.

“And I think that that has probably helped the campaign, not in a way that I’m particularly proud of because obviously I wish that women were allowed to be angry and didn’t have to smile. 

“[But] I think that has been a big reason for success in this space as well.”