“You two look very beautiful today” was the comment my friend and I received from a man, whose face I couldn’t pick out of a line up, as we were walking down Massachusetts Avenue in Boston last weekend. It was my first time in Boston so I wanted to see it all! This place is filled with beautiful architecture, wonderful history and interesting people. The accents were everything I could have imagined them to be, but I was hit with a harsh reality that cat calling happens to women everywhere.
Let me paint you a picture: I was walking down the street with my black parka that goes down to my knees and zipped all the way up, wearing leggings and combat boots. I had my head buried in my coat collar, because I forgot to bring a scarf, and a shopping bag at my waist with my hands in my pockets. This man had to comment on the fact that I looked beautiful, but my eyes, nose and the outline of my figure my jacket created were the only things visible to his eyes.
Boston is not the only place where I’ve been cat called. I lived in Florence, Italy for four months and the treatment of women was sickening. I would be afraid to walk one block at night back to my apartment alone in fear that a random person would follow me, although that has happened before. My friends and I would dress up nicely and then go to a club or bar almost every night in Italy. I felt degraded for being an American female in a foreign country. The comments that I would hear on a daily and nightly basis were horrifying. I don’t think highly of my beauty or lowly for that matter. It doesn’t occur to me to tell a nice looking man on the street, “damn you look good today.” So why do men feel it is necessary to tell a girl she looks beautiful. I don’t need approval from a stranger I will never see again.
An organization called Stop Street Harassment compiled a survey and 99% of the female respondents were victims of street harassment. That is an astounding number. In this day and age, where women have been rising up in the social, political and economical strata, we still fall victim to street harassment. The gender inequality is transparent in this study.
The meaningless comment this man said in Boston was meaningful to me. No matter where you go in life, women can be degraded by a single comment. This man has no idea who I am, where I’m going or if I am truly beautiful or not.
Why should I feel uncomfortable walking past a group of men fearing what they might say? What do these men think they will get out of cat calling a girl? Do they think I would magically want them because they called me “beautiful” or “sexy?” It is impossible to tell, but all I know is that it makes me feel unsafe and vulnerable in my own skin.
Freedom of speech is within our basic human rights, I understand, but where is the line drawn on harassment? Where can a girl walk down the street, alone, without fearing the words of a stranger?
Source: http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/strategies/sshlaw/
Hollabacknyc.blogspot.com