I’m back and fairly angry.
Apologies for not posting last week, inspiration was low but I’m back and ready to get back into weekly posting; dedicated and posting only the best content I can.
I admit that I don’t have a huge platform with this blog - it is in the grand scheme of the internet an insignificant collection of content. That being said, by sharing my blog on all of my social media platforms (being a basic millennial white girl I obviously have a few), I am confident that voicing my opinions on social issues will at least reach a big enough group of my peers to be worth while.
I want to discuss something that I myself have experienced a lot as a young woman. I am conscious that what I am going to describe is something that many different categories of people have also experienced, and it is certainly not restricted by age, gender or sexuality, to name a few. I can however only speak from my own personal social place and hope that it resonates with the demographic that read my blog, which I’m fairly sure is made up of primarily girls my age.
Since finishing uni for summer I have obviously been out and about in ‘summer-appropriate’ clothes. This will mean different things depending on your style and confidence in your body, but for me it usually means lose fitting pants, skirts, vest tops, t-shirts and dresses. Since this has become my regular wardrobe as the hot weather has, by some miracle, continued, I have had one too many negative and uncomfortable encounters.
Again, all of my recent encounters of people staring at me and making me feel uncomfortable, have been by the eyes of men exclusively. Again, I cannot categorise this behaviour as being solely that of men, and would happily believe that men themselves have experienced this with women in the same contexts, because unfortunately, immoral and disrespectful people can span every gender. I also understand that though I have experienced this quite frequently as of late, that this is not the general behaviour of all men, and I pride myself in surrounding myself with male friends that are 100% respectable, and not bloody creeps.
In case I am being vague, the experience I am referring to is, when I choose to wear ‘more revealing’ clothes, if I must call them that, I have received unsolicited, and sometimes quite threatening stares from men of varying ages, often with no remorse, embarrassment, or awareness of how the staring might make me, or any young woman feel. I have experienced a man stare at my legs when I’ve been wearing a short dress in the heat, and the same experience when I worse a top that showed off my shoulders, and most recently a v-necked vest top, which was the final straw and my inspiration for writing this post.
Just days ago I was taking the tube in London to Victoria Coach Station to get a coach home. It was an unbelievably warm day which is always even worse on the underground than it is outside. I had multiple bags, and was dressed in accordance with the heat, and being comfortable for the long journey I had ahead of me on the coach home.
From the minute I got into a crowded tube lift (it didn’t help that it was the tale-end of the morning rush hour at the time) I could feel two eyes staring directly at me - not my face either, quite blatantly at my chest. Yes, the top I had on was v-necked and fairly ‘revealing’ in that region. What I couldn’t understand was this man’s fascination though. I don’t have big boobs, so there wasn’t much cleavage created from the top whatsoever, BUT EVEN IF THERE WAS, he would have no right to act as he was. The way this man was staring at me, which remained just as consistent and creepy even when I made direct eye contact with him, was horrible and he had absolutely no right to do that and make me feel so on edge in an already hot and uncomfortable environment.
I tried to forget about the gross creep from the lift, but unfortunately things only got worse when I got on the train. I sat down, clearly struggling with my heavy bags and jacket that I was carrying, whilst feeling flustered as heck, and another delightful man took this opportunity to do exactly what lift guy had done. He was sat opposite me, a little to the left, and spent the entire journey staring. I was starting to get extremely frustrated by these encounters simply because I was showing some skin, and I made direct contact with this man as I had the previous. Looking him straight in the eye, very obviously rolling my eyes at him and holding my jacket against me to hide my skin, he still did not put his staring to a stop. It was a degrading experience that very much upset me.
To make matters worse on this horrendous tube journey, when I had to make a change onto The Victoria Line, a completely different train with a different set of people, YET ANOTHER man, stood opposite me and in very close proximity to me on the crowded train, behaved in exactly the same manner towards me, not letting up on staring for the entire journey once again. I left that tube station feeling like I had done something wrong, as if wearing a vest top on a warm day in which I was spending my whole day travelling, was somehow an inappropriate decision that warranted the stares of multiple people. Even if I had worn something even more revealing and perhaps risqué (which that top certainly wasn’t), it STILL doesn’t give these men the right to make me feel like my body is their property to stare at, judge and ogle over when I’m simply trying to go about my day like anyone else.
Of course, woman can and do wear clothes to get attention, whether that be sexual attention or simply turn a few heads, and that is completely fine; it’s their body. I was not wearing that top that day to gain attention from these men, and I think my reactions to them made it quite clear that I was unhappy with them staring, and still they did not stop. If they absolutely had to have a look at what I was wearing and the tonnes of skin that I was apparently showing, can it not just be a fleeting glance? What are they going to get out of staring and staring without letting up, has anyone ever successfully pulled someone by creepily perving over someone’s body from a distance which in turn makes that person uncomfortable? I highly doubt that. People need to understand that a person has the right to wear whatever they choose without fearing the reaction of the public. Yes, public indecency and nudity is illegal and not ok, that would certainly get a few disapproving stares. But, a 20 year old girl wearing a weather-appropriate outfit is normal, non-sexual and none of your business.
I don’t know what the solution is to this problem, and it really has shocked me that I was the receiver of three consecutive unsolicited stares from three different men, within about 20 minutes. To me, this makes me think that, at least in male culture (of course I can’t speak for the other side), this behaviour has been somewhat normalised and accepted as an appropriate way to treat a woman’s body. This is not ok at all. I wish I had had the confidence to call out these men vcocally and tell them where to go, because this was the climax of weeks and weeks of similar experiences and my frustration reached an unbelievable peak. I would encourage anyone who is the victim of such an experience to say something to the person and let them know that their behaviour is unacceptable - this will hopefully be the start of nipping this vile act in the bud, and maybe we can all enjoy the rest of our summer, not thinking about the reaction from creepy strangers on our bodies.
This is a hot and opinion-filled topic that I would love for people to discuss with me and my fellow readers. So, please let me know, man or woman, boy or girl, if this has happened to you and how it made you feel. Starting a conversation on this is the first step in making this world a more tolerant place.
See ya next weeeeek,
H x
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