Stop Telling Women to Smile by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Author:Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

CHRISTIANA

Summer Is Harassment Season

Age: 29

Identifies as: Asian American, bisexual

I meet Christiana, who works in media partnerships, at my studio in Brooklyn. As a longtime New Yorker, she’s had years to observe and analyze street harassment and recalibrate her reactions to it. Like most of the women I spoke to, she is eager to talk about her experiences.

As always, I start the conversation by asking her to define street harassment.

This is how I define it for myself and how I explain it to people who hear me complain about it and say, “oh, it’s a compliment.” It’s usually men who say “I’d love to get complimented like that.” If you’re a woman or presenting as a female and someone makes a comment to you in public, would that person say that to you if you were walking with a man? If not, then it’s street harassment.

You can say, “You look beautiful in that dress today,” and I have no doubt that you would say that to me in front of my father or my husband; but if you’re saying something that is obviously disrespectful, in tone or in word, you wouldn’t say that to me if I was walking with my father. It’s not out of respect for me, it’s out of respect for him. Because people will say all the time, “this person was just saying hello,” but I don’t think men would say hello to me like that if I was walking with my husband.

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