The summer I was 14, I think, there was an article in Sassy where one of the main writers (I think it was Christina) started keeping a log of the various incidents of sexual harassment that happened as she was going about her life, including what she was doing and what she was wearing. It gave me a lot to think about.
A few months later, I was back at school, and my friend Magda and I were walking from campus to the local mall (2-ish miles away I think). On the way there, plenty of males decided to direct inappropriate comments or behavior at us, including a car that was circling around in a way that was really freakin' scary.
We decided to count individual incidents on the way back. I've forgotten the precise number, but I believe it was somewhere around 30. In the course of a TWO MILE WALK on a weekend afternoon. Two fifteen-year-old girls, fairly unremarkable in appearance overall (this was pre-fat for me). One wearing a very oversized red t-shirt and just-above-knee jean shorts, the other wearing a slightly less oversized but in no way clingy tie-dye shirt and jeans. Apparently just daring to be, y'know, outside and shit on a nice day where men could see us was grounds for windows to roll down and men to make inquiries about how much we charged or to comment about what they wanted to do with us.
And just because we knew they were wrong, just because we'd make fun of them later as we sat down to our ice cream at the local diner, didn't change the absolute skin-crawling feeling of discomfort and wrongness for daring to exist as female in public that such attention always brought on in the moment it was happening.
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Date: 2011-06-15 04:57 am (UTC)A few months later, I was back at school, and my friend Magda and I were walking from campus to the local mall (2-ish miles away I think). On the way there, plenty of males decided to direct inappropriate comments or behavior at us, including a car that was circling around in a way that was really freakin' scary.
We decided to count individual incidents on the way back. I've forgotten the precise number, but I believe it was somewhere around 30. In the course of a TWO MILE WALK on a weekend afternoon. Two fifteen-year-old girls, fairly unremarkable in appearance overall (this was pre-fat for me). One wearing a very oversized red t-shirt and just-above-knee jean shorts, the other wearing a slightly less oversized but in no way clingy tie-dye shirt and jeans. Apparently just daring to be, y'know, outside and shit on a nice day where men could see us was grounds for windows to roll down and men to make inquiries about how much we charged or to comment about what they wanted to do with us.
And just because we knew they were wrong, just because we'd make fun of them later as we sat down to our ice cream at the local diner, didn't change the absolute skin-crawling feeling of discomfort and wrongness for daring to exist as female in public that such attention always brought on in the moment it was happening.