When I was 13, I had to walk around downtown for a little while, and I just happened to be wearing my dance clothes. A few blocks into my walk, I realized something wasn’t quite right. Head down, arms crossed, eyes diverted, one foot in front of the other. “Just ignore them” as words pour at me from every direction. “Beautiful, nice legs, cute jeans, you’re sexy, s***, beautiful, w****, I’d tap that.” ‘Nice’ or not, some people snicker, yelling at me to just ignore it, or that they’re just ‘compliments’; as if I care whether or not men on the streets think I’m beautiful. As if these ‘compliments’ decide my worth, and affect the way I will see myself. Every word thrown at me forces my head lower, my arms crossed tighter. Every step made me angrier, words hurled about my appearance, my ‘obvious need for attention’, and that I must not know how to accept ‘compliments’. As I looked up I realize someone was actually walking behind me, encouraging the harassment, and I lost it. I turned around and kicked him in the shins, which to this day is still probably the most outrageous thing I have ever done. Nothing happened to me, but the further I walked down the street I realized something very well could have. People looked at me funny, and the yelling turned to whispers. Now that I fought back I was a b**** who needed to figure out my life. Reaching my destination, tears streaming down my face, I wouldn’t tell anyone what was wrong, and people eventually stopped asking. When people talk to me like this now, I stop and reassess before trying to stop them, and I will never resort to violence again. But my mind still tells me not to tell anyone. Why? Why are girls taught to sit around and fix their own problems, and guys are told to stand up for themselves. Even when I’m with other women, nothing changes.

Harassment given out like oxygen in the air, following us. But after it’s over, we don’t even talk about it amongst ourselves, like any mention of it would kill us. The older I get, the more I’m taught that apparently I deserve the attention because of how I was acting, what I was wearing, like if I took more notice to how I looked and acted people would stop doing things like this. My first reaction to hearing things like this was to test that theory. I started walking confidently, wearing more modest things as often as possible, and no matter what I did people yelled to me about it. And even now, I can’t walk out of the house without my headphones to block it all out and even that doesn’t stop it. But if people are going to notice me, I guess they should notice the person I want to be.