Street Harassment

After becoming the million and one-th viewer of Hollaback!’s, the nonprofit dedicated to ending street harassment, you tube video currently trending and then reading some of the comments I decided I couldn't pass up the opportunity to add my point of view, two cents, or what have you. This post comes on the heels of my last post about Fat Girl Costumes, no less. The women in the video who spent 10 hours walking the streets of New York is just a regular sized girl wearing regular clothes, nothing ‘provocative’ and she doesn't acknowledge any of the attention she receives as she follows her videographer who is wearing a hidden Go Pro video camera needless to say, unbeknownst to the rest of the world and specifically the girl’s street harassers. The girl is the recipient of more than 100 harassments which include catcalls, verbalized comments, and several short stalking periods but not all are shown in the video. None of the comments were simple good mornings or good evenings. That’s a quick summary in case you aren’t one of the more than one million and one viewers and might have missed this on social media or the Today Show or wherever this is being shown. The comments I read were quite interesting and point up to me the difference in how men and women basically view the subject of street harassment. Several commenters state that what Hollaback! labels as street harassment are simply compliments but I tend to agree with one of the Hollaback! founders, who says (and I am paraphrasing here) that hearing comments about your body every five minutes makes you change the way you walk down the street, because women are often not hearing these ‘compliments’ the way the complimentors may be intending them. I wave and say good morning to everyone I cross paths with on my walks and bike soirees around my small town of St. Marys, GA and I feel pretty sure that any words of encouragement I pass on to other joggers and walkers don’t fall into the street harassment category. As you may also guess, I am not a recipient of street harassment either.