IVYBETCH
Dartmouth College '18
Growing up, my mom taught me many things, one of which was that whether I liked it or not, men were going to look at my body. This lesson became a reality for me in eighth grade when I took a trip to Europe with my class.
I had spent countless hours packing for the trip, picking the perfect outfits for my debut in Europe. I had visions of falling madly in love with an Italian boy, much like Lizzie McGuire. However, when I finally got there, I learned that the boys were far less interested in what I was wearing and more so in what was underneath it.
Throughout the trip, I noticed a familiar sound following me through the streets. Men of all ages were making hooting calls, almost as if they were in a secret club with a song they all knew by heart. It took me a long time to realize what they were doing, and an even longer time to realize the calls were targeted at me.
For a moment I was flattered. All these men thought I was attractive? But as the day went on, and the more I contemplated it, it became clear to me that these men were sexualizing my body in a way that no 14 year old, (and no woman for that matter), should have to deal with.
My teacher met with me later that day and told me that tomorrow I had to be sure to dress much more conservatively. He said the attention I was bringing on myself and on the group was potentially dangerous, and that I shouldn't want that negative attention. My guy friends on the trip agreed with him. One of them said, "Well Phoebe, you are kind of asking for it. You wouldn't dress the way you do if you didn't want the attention."
At 14 years old, and now more than six years later, I still find it ridiculous that women have to worry about how they dress because of the attention it may bring to them. I dress the way I do to make myself feel pretty and powerful, not to get attention from anyone else.
The way a woman chooses to dress, at any age, should never be considered the cause of a sexual crime committed against her. And yet, we as women are taught that we must be careful because we live in a world where sexual predators exist and maybe even target women who dress in a certain way.
But women should be able to dress however they want, without considering someone's potential reaction. Perhaps this makes me sound ignorant to the dangerous world we live in, (a world where one in five women will be raped sometime during their lifetime), but in my opinion it doesn't matter if you are dressed like a nun or a stripper; nobody is asking to be raped.
I've gotten in many fights with my now ex-boyfriend about this same issue. Throughout our relationship, he made countless comments about how he hated that I "dressed slutty". He felt that other boys looked at me when we went out and it bothered him because I was his girlfriend. There may be more to look at now than when I was 14, but that doesn't change the fact that I am still not the one to blame--the men unabashedly staring at me are.
Men in all parts of the world should not feel entitled to harass women and then blame the women for warranting their harassment. It is astonishing that in 2016, people are still trying to blame women for unwanted sexual attention, or worse, sexual assault or rape.
The victims are never to blame, not in 2006 or in 2016, and not in the United States or abroad.
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