My sister's not here today. I miss her. But I haven't heard anything, so I assume all is fine, and she is just busy. She gifted me with a ticket to see my son and the gift was inside a copy of Women Who Run With Wolves. I tried to find it at the library after both she and my close friend talked about this book, and couldn't find it. So now I get to read it and see what it says to me.
We have been discussing sexual abuse a lot, and I had another conversation today that riled me a bit. It seems a young European cinema student made a film for school. She dressed in modest, normal every day clothes and walked through the streets of Brussels, Belgium. A cohort followed behind with a hidden camera to record men's reactions. Men make comments, groups of men laugh. Men get up and follow her, ask her rude, threatening questions.
I watched an interview with the student. She talks of shame. She wonders if she is dressed wrong, what she is doing wrong. Men just feel free to comment on her body, to ask her to stop, to have a drink, to go directly to bed. The film-maker says she is trying not to be racist, for most of the men who are harassing her are Moroccan immigrants, or perhaps second or third generation Moroccan. But the person I was talking to was from France, and told me that many French women have the same experience. And as an American, it has happened to me. Walking by a construction site was excruciatingly humiliating when I was young. Having men stop and ask if I wanted a ride was threatening.
It is dehumanizing to be rated only by body, to become only a body. It is as humiliating now when I am post-menopausal, and therefore invisible. When I was young, my only societal value was as a sexual object. Now that I am not that, I am nothing. But being invisible does give a lonely power.
The other message that hit me was an image that has gone viral. The top half is Victoria Secret models, in their underwear. The bottom half is the Dove women - real women in the white cotton undies. (ahh - undies was Mom's word - I never use this word!!) In the top, the women stand individually, with arms back, what breasts the have pushed forward - not to mention boosted by an underwire. Their arms drape casually by their crotch, drawing eyes to their core sexuality. The Dove women touch, crowd together, stand in profile, to protect their sexuality. The most beautiful of all the women, in both photos, to me, is definitely in the bottom. I know that in order to get pregnant, a woman must have a specific number of calories stored on her body - enough to support a pregnancy. I think the women in the top row make infertility look sexually inviting...just one of those stray thoughts. I wonder, if we were not told by the media what type of women was powerful and to be desired, which would be seen as most attractive, most desirable.
Unfortunately, the men on the street prove they really don't care. If it's young and female, they will harass.
Our society credits the most power to the maiden, the least experienced stage of womanhood. Then we silence the mother and the crone....
Harassment on the street is sexual abuse. Any unwanted sexual attention is wrong.
Being opinionated again!
Clare
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