When London turned into an inferno of humidity recently, I was reminded of a summer tradition as inevitable as rainy bank holidays and cider hangovers: catcalling. Rarely does a hot day pass where you can walk around in a light, sheer dress, thin straps, short shorts, or whatever your summer vibe may be, where you won’t receive heckling, whistling, or silent, but never unnoticed, stares. ‘Street harassment definitely gets worse over the summer. The more skin on show, the less guys seem to be able to control themselves,’ says fashion journalist Harriet Walker when asked if she’s noticed a seasonal increase in heckling. ‘The power of a sundress on a weak mind is a terrifying thing.’
I doubt if I’m the only person who’s placed the blame on my flimsy slip or chest-skimming neckline when I’ve sensed watchful eyes following me down the street, and with the culture of victim blaming surrounding issues of street harassment, it’s no surprise that ‘I suppose I’m asking for it in this’ is often the first thought that comes to mind.
If a guy was to get sexually assaulted, would the people who were enquiring ask him what he was wearing? No.
‘It’s a shame that women feel the need to explain what they were wearing at the time of harassment,’ says Julia Grey, co-founder of the London arm of Hollaback!, a global campaign that aims to empower women to fight against street harassment. ‘It happens very rarely that a guy goes out without a top and gets groped, and I think that's an important point in demonstrating that this is a very gendered problem, and very unequal and not right. If a guy was to get sexually assaulted, would the people who were enquiring ask him what he was wearing? No.’
READ MORE: Woman Films Her Catcallers, Gives Them Cards To Stop Them Harassing Women
Whether or not a woman attracts unwanted attention actually has very little to do with what she’s wearing anyway. ‘I’ve been called all sorts of things even when wearing a winter coat, so it’s clearly a cultural problem rather than a clothing issue,’ Walker notes.
The fact that simply being a woman is seen to be ‘asking for it’ – it being anything from wolf whistles to full on sexual assault – regardless of outfit choice couldn't have been clearer than when †witter user @steenfox asked her followers to tell her what they’d been wearing when they were sexually abused. The droves of women who responded had been dressed in everything from jeans to children’s pyjamas. Abuse is a problem even when not dressed ‘provocatively’. ‘If you look at countries where rates of rape are really high, they tend to be the countries where women cover up a lot,’ Grey notes. ‘Street harassment isn’t about flattery or complements or sex, it’s about power and control, and that is evident by the fact that it doesn't matter what you’re wearing.’
I was very nervous about running and I ended up getting a gym membership that I couldn't really afford because I couldn't go out without being shouted at.
The amount of stories that have appeared on Hollaback! where women have reported street harassment while undertaking the least sexy of tasks - jogging - further debunks the idea that you're asking for trouble if you dress a certain way. Grey, too, has experienced this. ‘I was very nervous about running and I ended up getting a gym membership that I couldn’t really afford because I couldn’t go out without being shouted at,’ she recalls.
Bristol-based writer Ellen Waddell has also found that running attracts attention that she finds both surprising and uncomfortable. ‘There’s often spots where I’ll have to jog up and down on the spot waiting for the lights to change and there’re always men in white vans staring at me which is such a cliché,’ she says, exasperated. ‘The more I ignore them, the more they have to do something. It makes me angry, and I always wish I had a really good way to make this guy realise how shouting things at me, or passing judgement makes me feel.’
Rather than getting deeper into a vortex of victim blaming, she suggests that ‘boys should be given better education and be taught to respect women and what is acceptable or not acceptable’.
In fact this week, that education seems to be coming from the most unlikliest of sources – Playboy magazine. They've created a handy flowchart to let men know when cat-calling is OK. Even they admit that it’s pretty much never cool – unless you’re actually a cat (which we think is a little harsh on cats, tbh).
As for us, Grey says we need to stop thinking that our clothes are causing the problem. ‘Street harassment is incredibly disempowering, and to be further disempowered by not having a choice about what to wear is further disempowering and really sad,’ she explains. ‘We should not bow to the pressure that dictates what we should wear.’
Instead, wearing whatever we want, whether that be a T-shirt you've slept in for three days and running shorts, or a pair of arse-baring hot-pants, is at least one way of taking a stand against harassment. ‘Chances are whatever you wear you’re going to get harassed so you can’t win,’ Grey continues. ‘Wear what you want and be proud and confident about it and don’t let anybody tell you that you shouldn’t be wearing it. And don’t let anyone tell you that you deserve to be getting catcalled or groped, or leered at.’
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Picture: Rory DCS
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.