The female body is spectacular, but mine is not a spectacle.
I wrote the following after hours in the Istanbul airport on my way to Egypt, where I would proceed to experience harassment a lot worse than what's described below. This ended up becoming a theme of my experience on this trip, and a large part of my reflections afterwards.
I considered posting this before I took off, but held back for fear of your opinions and also because I wanted to get out of the situation and reflect further before saying anything. This is an explanation of how something that colors my daily life makes me feel, and so I stand by it. I hope you can understand that.
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René Maran has a quote about colonialism which rings like a bell in my mind every time I am catcalled, stared at, or followed.
"Everything you touch you consume.”
Sometimes I feel like everything of me that is seen is consumed. Some days I don't care, and I wear what I want and how I want. Other days it feels like a matter of life and death.
There is nothing abnormal about the female body. Beautiful? Yes. Fascinating? Sure. But abnormal? Absolutely not.
There is nothing abnormal about the female body existing and persisting in public spaces. I am uninterested in being gawked at for walking. I am very aware that I get attention in public, and I've been aware of that since I was twelve. eleven. ten. earlier.
Part of me wants to apologize for saying this, as though I'm exposing myself, like it's bragging to confess that men I do not know stare at me when I walk down a street or a hallway or a terminal or a anywhere outside of my own home.
Another part of me wants to point out the way I am dressed: covered wrist to neck to ankle, no glimpse of skin available to anyone. Hair up, no makeup.
Another part of me wants to amend the previous statement. The long sleeve shirt I put on this morning is a bit tight, and I guess if you squint you can see where my bra begins and ends. I like the way my ass looks in these jeans. The boots covering my ankles and feet make a click and a clack that I love to hear when I'm walking those same streets and hallways and terminals and anywhere outside my home. When I'm feeling confident, I like to joke that I wear heels to warn people that I'm on my way.
A part of me wants to apologize for my tight shirt and my cute-butt jeans and my heels.
A part of me wants to apologize for things I can't control, too. I've been told that I get attention because I am tall and because I'm blonde.
But when I think about who I am apologizing to, I can't decide.
To you, the reader, for complaining about people liking my body when I, myself, like my body too?
To my mom, for worrying her with these types of posts?
To the man looking at me right now, as I type, for existing in his line of site?
To everyone, for existing in sight at all?
The reason I am thinking about any of this is that I have spent the past three hours in the Istanbul airport being looked at as I walked by, being assessed up and down and back up again, thinking about why people do that. What is it about a person that merits stares?
In three hours, the only explanation I've found is abnormality. Because while I like the way I look, while I don't think that I am abnormal, that is how being stared at makes me feel.
In three hours, I looked for longer than 2 seconds at exactly two people. The first was a man taking a selfie with his phone held upside down. That was funny to me. That was abnormal to me. The second was a man in a wheelchair who had no legs. Something I had never seen before. Something abnormal to me.
Selfie man was in his own world, so I didn't feel bad for looking, but I still looked away when I chuckled a bit. The man in the wheelchair was different. I felt immediately guilty for looking, and looked to his eyes. I got the feeling he was used to this type of shit. We smiled at each other, and I found myself thinking that I had found someone who got it.
Before anyone says it, I'll say it first: Being looked at is the least of my problems, and the least of women's' problems on the whole. But I started feeling abnormal because of my body the moment I had a hint of boobs and hips and ass, and I haven't escaped that feeling since. Some days it's easy to ignore the feeling or write it off. Other days I cry once I get in the door of my apartment.
Maybe staring isn't harassment, maybe it isn't even a choice rather than an automatic reaction. But over time, through repetition, it's powerful - it has at times made me feel less than human.
What is it about this body that makes it so abnormal? Can anyone tell me? I can't figure it out.
The female body can do spectacular things, but that doesn't make its simple existence a spectacle.
Edited to add a comment made by a facebook friend, Afreen:
"Thank you for sharing! I love and agree w this 100%, but I also think it’s a bit unsettling when people travel to Arab and Muslim countries and point out that the harassment is so much worse there, without contextualizing it by individual or social experience. Patriarchy is a problem everywhere, and its manifestation depends a lot on how social realities have been shaped. In countries that have been colonized, white beauty standards and exoticization have been imposed for years on the native population. Women in that population have been told that they’re not good enough, that they have to aspire to whiteness, that men desire white women more. And the after effects of colonization mean that when when a white woman walks into a place where no one looks like her, everyone stares. It’s wrong, and misogynistic, but it has everything to do with the way whiteness has been imposed on them. That’s the root of the problem. When I travel to a Muslim country, I face far far less harassment than I do in the US. Here, bc of America’s political weaponizing of Muslims and exoticizing of Muslim women, I can’t walk down the street without feeling exactly like you described feeling in Turkey or Egypt. When I am in Turkey or Egypt, on the other hand, I belong to a collective group of people that don’t look like the beauty standards that have been imposed on the native population and therefore get to exist as a human being in a way I don’t get to in America. This is long, but essentially the imperialist/colonialist project of the West has a lot to do with how patriarchy is imposed on women, and I think that’s so important to contextualize bc Muslim countries already face a heavy stereotype of being “barbaric” and “terrible to women”. If we call it out, as we should call out misogyny everywhere, then I think understanding where it comes from is crucial so we don’t contribute to the harm of casting Muslim countries as less human or less civilized."
I agree with her point and I hope to one day soon make a whole post about the distinction between harassment across countries, and the differing experiences for women of different backgrounds. Until then, I can only do my best to represent myself and my experiences, and listen to the experiences of others.