Peepshow

I can probably mark my onset of puberty with the day men first started
sketching on me in the middle of the street.

This was before I was fashion-conscious, and before I considered myself attractive, you understand. I was just this dumpy, awkward, nerdy-looking girl who could do with washing her hair a few more times per week. Anyway, one day when I was 15 years old, I was out with my family. I was wearing jeans and a bottle-necked, thick, white sweater. We were entering a clothing store when I felt the unmistakable sensation of a hand surreptitiously groping my ass. I spun around indignantly, angrily, to see the guy I thought did it gliding smoothly away.

Later, I for some reason decided to go home ahead of everyone else. So I was walking home, in the middle of the day in this big city, and this guy comes up to me and starts asking me questions about the firework display that’s happening later that day. Fine, I thought naively, he’s just some lost foreigner who wants to know what’s going on in the city. So I answered him.

But after a while he started asking me questions about me. Where I lived, what my name was, if I’d spend time with him. It was at this point that I just started walking away, hoping that he wouldn’t follow me.

“Tell me your name,” he called after me.

“No,” I said.

And of course there were all the instances where people just made remarks loudly at me: “hey beautiful”, “want to come with me?”, cat-calls, whatever. Which always makes me feel more like I was being talked at than talked to. As if I were a tasty-looking meal or a nice car that they’re voicing their approval of.

I’m only writing about this now because today I was waiting for the bus, some guy walked past me, commented on how attractive I was, then asked me my age. Thankfully, he simply left right after that and I just felt embarrassed. But it reminded me of something that happened when I was in San Francisco. I was trying to meet a friend and had got a bit lost, so I was wandering around looking kind of confused. And then this dude starts walking with me. Asking me personal questions, asking me to hang out with him, saying “when I saw you I thought – wow! – you’re special,” etc, etc. I eyerolled, thought “sure, like you can tell so much about me just by looking at me,” gave him a fake name, gave him a fake number, hoped he would be contented with that and just go away, made it clear to him that I was busy and had to meet a friend, but he didn’t leave. He followed me for at least two fucking blocks.

He finally left when I started ignoring him, which is what I should have done in the first place.

I am too fucking polite with these people.

I’ve always reacted to these encounters with a confusing slew of emotions. On the one hand, I felt strangely flattered. At least I’m attracted enough to get noticed, right? But that feeling was always quashed very fast. Why were these guys doing this? Was there just something about me, or the way I dressed, that just screamed “I AM A GIRL WITH NO STANDARDS, FUCK ME”? Plus, how come no normal, young, decent men tried to approach me? Why was it always these creepy, middle-aged men who lurked around on street corners?

(Hmm. It’s probably because all the decent guys know better than to do shit like that.)

Let me get something straight…

When I put an outfit together, I wear it because it is aesthetically pleasing to me and rarely because I will be using it to seduce someone.

I briefly considered changing the way I dress, thinking that maybe it would help… but then I realized something. There’s nothing wrong with the way I dress. The ones with the problem are those men who come up to me.

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