Today has been a lovely day. After a rough time at work yesterday and a particularly exhausting week, I am for some reason in the best of moods today, even better than my usual Friday perk. I’m so cheerful, even, that a cat call this morning did not ruffle my feathers. In fact, I rather appreciated it!
This is remarkable because I have long despised the cat-calling tradition. You might recall the disgusting remark a Chilean friend of mine received, but a cat call doesn’t have to mention female genitalia to make me want to punch the caller in the face. I hate them all! I hate the objectification, I hate the vulgarity, and I hate what they do to women. When I lived in the DR, I stood out like a sore thumb with my blond hair and pale skin — apparently a beautiful sore thumb, because there were few men who would not toss me a piropo when I walked by. It made me crazy! But I came to a point in the summer when I resented the men who ignored me, too. That’s a horrible feeling, desiring the attention that, when you get it, you despise.
Once, our bus driver Chicho and I were standing on a corner in Santo Domingo waiting for our herd of teenagers to return from shopping, and every woman that walked by received a glowing review from Chicho (one of my favorite men in the DR, mind you). I’d finally had it. “Chicho!” I scolded. “How can you do that? You know how much it bothers me.” And he said, “If I don’t tell these women they’re beautiful, they’re going to go through the rest of the day wondering why I thought they weren’t beautiful. I am doing this because if I don’t, they’ll feel bad!”
You know what? It’s kind of true. Cat-calling (such a mild term for such an offensive act) is sexist and disgusting and treats women as objects, but women get used to it, and they learn to expect it, even want it. That makes me as angry as the cat-calling itself.
In Chile one night, my friends Karina and Malena and I stood on Karina’s grandma’s balcony and threw piropos down at the men who walked by. Simple stuff like “!Que rico!” and, for the men walking with girlfriends, “!Sueltala!” It was fun, but it made us feel no better to exact our revenge as the objectifier than it does to be objectified.
What was different this morning? My objectifier, who was passing out some sort of flier that I didn’t want, said, “Full respect, but you’re so beautiful.”
It was still disrespectful, I suppose, that he was seeing me as an object. Or was it? At the very least, he was acknowledging that I might find his comment disrespectful, and I appreciated that.
Also, can I blame him? Because here’s what I looked like this morning:
Oh, I kid. I said I was blond, after all! That’s Aishwarya Rai, whose image is the first that came up in a Google search for “most beautiful woman in the world.” One day, perhaps my photo will appear in its place. But for now, damn, baby, she’s hot!
In Stitches 