My best friend and I are of two minds about catcalling. She assumes the rare attitude of flattery, even pride, when a stranger compliments her. I, on the other hand, am known to spend the rest of the day engaged in one long rant about gender politics if someone even looks at me for too long.
In spite of this rather crucial difference in opinion, my friend and I both love and, oddly enough, respect each other. But we both think the other person needs to grow some self-esteem, and fast.
I know how she feels, but I’m not interested in arguing her side of things. Catcalling makes no sense to me. The comments I’ve heard on the street in no way encouraged me to dress more revealingly; actually, they’ve trained me, and countless others, against it.
The thing is, I wasn’t born with a sense of what clothing is attractive to male strangers and what isn’t. Through experience, I’ve developed an understanding that some clothes aren’t “safe” to wear, based on the reaction they’ve gotten and how unsettled that reaction made me feel. And I know I’m not alone.
What needs to be understood is that what’s sexy to some is just a necessity to others, like shorter hemlines in hotter weather. One man’s obscene — like, say, yoga pants — is another woman’s comfort. The same garment can look more or less risque on a person based on something as innate as body type. There is no prescription for attraction; it is subjective to its core.
Yet when we address catcalling, this is how we behave: as if a stranger’s perception of another’s appearance is the objective truth.
I was 11 years old the first time I was catcalled. I was in Washington, D.C. walking with my mother back to our hotel. She was the initial object of the catcaller’s affections before he turned them on me. I was dressed in a sweatshirt with Snoopy on the front; sticking out of my cargo shorts were fuzzy legs still too young to shave. My mom was dressed like a mom.
It was the very first time my form was taken out of the context in which I knew it: as a gangly-but-reliable container for all my youthful hijinks and tumbles. Not a single cell of me had any interest in sex appeal (which frankly should go without saying).
My mother and I wordlessly marched the rest of the way to the hotel, where I hid in the bathroom and told her I wouldn’t be coming out until it was time to go home. I remember that my reflection made me queasy.
She was exasperated, and I can understand why. My reaction must have seemed awfully histrionic to someone who had been on the receiving end of decades of unwanted sexual advances. In retrospect, I don’t think my pre-teen self was exactly afraid of anything, though. I think I was just struggling with the fact that I could be translated into something other than what I thought I was, something that could easily reduce me — and my formidable mother — to downcast eyes and humiliated silence.
Furthermore, even if someone politely tells me that I look cute, that’s still not why I got out of bed in the morning. I do a lot of things in this body besides putting it on display, and I use clothing to convey a lot more than attractiveness. Yet when a man catcalls you, he is decontextualizing you — rearranging the quirks, imperfections and mundanity of your life — into his idea of sexiness. And, as I learned in D.C., his idea of sexiness can defy all logic and propriety.
It’s important for men and women (and everybody in between) to keep in mind that our bodies existed before our culture did; that means that a body — in a low-cut dress or a short skirt or a bikini or nothing at all — is an objective truth, and the rest is fantasy.
Though it’s aggravating that a close friend of mine likes to get catcalled, I’m able to shrug it off by thinking of my 11-year-old self in her Snoopy sweatshirt, cowering in the hotel bathroom. I tell her that 26-year-old me has much better things to feel flattered by.
Sophie Yarin is the deputy editor of The Daily Item.
