Are you serious, sir?
What does that even mean?
Is that an adjective?
My what?
Please stop.
I’m gonna go hide in the nearest store now.
Creep.
As I pretend to browse through various deli products, I replay the man’s indecency in my head. The way they pathetically try to combine obscenity with charm, creating a lexicon of multilingual slang and urban dictionary terms—it’s almost impressive. Disturbing, but impressive.
This is, truly, the 21stcentury form of courtship.
As teenage girls—the lucky, most common recipients of such gallantry—we have come to accept these exchanges as unavoidable and commonplace. Our reactions have become as predictable as the body features subject to their attentions: we silently absorb their slimy remarks and rush to repeat them before an audience. We delight in recounting our personal stories of getting hit on, a perfect opportunity for discreet self-flattery. The men are the walking, talking mirrors of our dreams. But we’re ladies, so we scoff and pretend to be repulsed by their griminess.
Disgusted? My “blessed and apocalyptic” behind—we’re on to you, girls. Just because he didn’t see the smile creep out the corners of your mouth doesn’t mean nobody else did. Why are we able to forgive so easily the vile offenses of the passing guy? Perhaps it is because of an innate female desire for male approval. (Who can blame us for jumping at the opportunity to feel immediate gratification for our efforts to look $200-at-American-Apparel good?) Perhaps it is because it’s hard enough as it is to be praised by the men we know, so why not compromise by listening to strangers instead? Even if we refuse to admit it, it’s a comfort knowing that at least someone is paying attention. Our narcissism allows us to not only welcome their remarks, but also even to patronizingly pity the men who make them. What with our teenage angst and often uninspired love lives, a little extra flattery can hardly hurt…right?
But beyond the brief delight we feel at hearing our adolescent physiques praised: what is the effect that their comments have on us? Is it really as superficial as the comments in the first place? As an individual subject to these attentions— one of thousands—I see the profound impact that they have on the egocentric city girl become more apparent every day.
Consider the swarms of girls growing up who have their independence undermined daily by a growing dependence on the constant comments of these nameless men. How many of us can’t admit to having once felt crestfallen for not inspiring enough whistles as we walked, or felt somehow less attractive without their flattery following our every step? We leave the house already expecting their attention. And so their outlandish, romantic, sexual hopes and desires become virtual reality as the praise drives us to wear shorter and shorter skirts, or to apply an extra layer of makeup onto our already cakey skin. Amazingly enough, our selfconfidence (or what’s left of it) is now partially shaped by a shadowed lump on the corner.
We’re so used to hearing their aggressively sexual comments that they’ve stopped seeming offensive, our concepts of decency and vulgarity warped until it’s hard for us to distinguish between the two. It scares me to think that I have felt pleasure in hearing myself described so explicitly. But the problem isn’t just what they say, or how they say it: the act of commenting itself is degrading. It doesn’t take a militant feminist to realize that the idea that women might be persistently exposed to the opinions of anonymous men is insulting at its core. Women have become desensitized to the disrespect, now accepting the idea that men can say anything to women without expecting a response. Double standards are reasserted as we listen to what they say without so much as questioning their right to say it.
Their comments are, to me, sweetened reminders of a modernized and subtle sexism that roams the city. These one-way conversations signal the innate authority that some men feel is still rightfully theirs to pass judgment on any woman. Growing complacency to what men say to women on the street is a dangerous thing, perhaps reinforcing the subordination of women in our society.
It’s our responses—however private—to these attentions that are most disturbing. Selfabsorbed as we are, it requires a conscious effort to ignore the honeyed language of the strangers. It’s saddening to think that I, like many others, have felt satisfaction in hearing myself discussed so perversely. It takes a whole lot of modesty to not grow senseless to what men say to you on the street, and to not expect it as you leave home on a Monday morning—but for the sake of your own self-worth, girls, put their comments in perspective. What with our lack of sleep, stress, and whatever else bothers us, we can hardly look that good.
Theirs is an ingenious scheme, really. Satisfy our vanity while reinforcing archaic gender roles. I would bow my head to you, male race, if I did not think you’d somehow make a sexual comment about the back of it.
ahahahahaha so good. genius
You make a lot of good points, but it’s important to remember that there are two people in that interaction. So while the motives for that random guy’s comments may be suspect, there is no reason to disregard whatever complimentary substance there is to them. The problem, as you mention, is when those comments begin to be a source of one’s esteem, because it doesn’t feed self-esteem, but a dependence on others for determining self-worth. I wouldn’t say that it goes as far as males subordinating females in society with those comments; girls subordinate themselves if they allow those comments to provide motivation for how they dress and act. These comments are reflective of the men who make them, but girls have a choice in how they engage with the comments themselves. If someone, male or female, believes they look good regardless of the comments, then it’s easy to see them as just a (perhaps crude and misguided) sign of affirmation, not needed, but definitely appreciated.
but can you really call girls who feel a sense of pride or “delight” in unwanted verbal sexual advances “egocentric”, or blame it on an “innate female desire for male approval”? Do you really think that women are born craving these crude comments? Or is it the fault of the very structure of our society and of mass media, which constantly broadcast themes aiming to dehumanize women and subjugate us to men? Is it really correct to be blaming a girl for feeling flattered by these remarks, when in reality we have been conditioned constantly since birth, by degrading, sexist advertisements and entrenched gender stereotypes, to have a sense of self worth completely tied to our physical appearances and the fulfillment of men’s sexual desires? Is it the GIRL’S fault, or is it the fault of our inherently sexist society?
If you want to talk about it that way, then we can blame everything on “society.” In the end, girls need to take responsibility for their own self-esteem in order to rise above the patriarchy.
To argue about whose fault it is is rather pointless, I’m afraid, because the blame game only serves to perpetuate antagonistic feelings from the victims to the so-called villains. Yes, there is an element to which society has some fault, but it would be overly simplistic to suggest that the girls themselves play no part in it. I don’t believe it’s intrinsic to the nature of females to seek approval from men, and in that sense I agree that society has a large role. However, it doesn’t make sense to spend $10 a day on candy just because society says eating candy is worthwhile because it tastes so good. So I think to blame society for its effect on how girls gather esteem from others would be to vastly demean the intellect of said girls, because it would suggest that they are incapable of choosing the reasons for why they accept/reject these advances. In this consumerist society, firms appeal to our desires more regularly than they appeal to our sense of need (by convincing us that what we want is actually what we NEED), but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to know ourselves well enough to identify what we need, with minimal interference on society’s part. Again, if girls don’t feel that they NEED this attention, then it makes it a random event in one’s day, and it starts by realising that you have a choice to accept society’s role for you. In direct response to the last post, it’s not correct to blame girls for feeling flattered by these remarks, but it is correct to point out that girls have a choice when it comes to how they view them: sources of esteem, or trivialities that only affirm a sense of sincere self-worth independent of societal expectations.
Yeah, I’m not sure I got your whole $10-for-candy analogy, but I think your statement largely agrees with the ideas expressed in the article. You say that the blame game is useless and that girls have a choice on how to view these comments. Catalina’s main point, in my opinion, is for girls to make the same choice you suggest: “for the sake of your own self-worth, girls, put their comments in perspective.” She wants to eliminate this cycle of dependence for herself and for her readers.
Isn’t that what you are saying too?
I thought your article was really interesting and that you made a valid point about the modern subordination of women in our society. But as a teenage girl, I can definitively say that I could not relate to the reaction of flattery. If an adult man makes an explicit comment about me, it makes me feel dirty and guilty and not in any way flattered. I’d rather go unnoticed.