Sociological Images is publishing a four-post series on sexual objectification this week. In the third post, author Caroline Heldman gives advice about how “girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects.”
The first suggestion is “stop seeking male attention” (full excerpt below) and that directly relates to street harassment and one of its complexities. From a young age, women of all sexual orientations have been taught that there is no higher compliment than male attention and being desired by men, and as a result, some women feel flattered by street harassment, even if they also feel upset, scared or annoyed by it too.
The belief that male attention validates you as a woman is why some older women tell younger women, “you’ll miss it when you’re older.” What a sad statement about their self esteem and what they’ve been raised to believe their self-worth is if they miss random men on the streets yelling out evaluations of their looks, grabbing them, and following them, right?
But these cultural messages are really engrained and it can be hard to break those beliefs, as I know from personal experience.
The message that male attention was the be all/end all surrounded me growing up. I was raised in a religion that had a preoccupation with prepping girls for an early marriage and large family with the male patriarchs we would marry. I remember being as young as in preschool when my aunts started asking me if I had a boyfriend yet. And, then like every other girl, I was surrounded by tv shows and movies and even songs on the radio where the narrative focused on girls/women finding a boyfriend/prince/husband/true love. I had a hard time envisioning a life after that point because I was so rarely given a glimpse of what it looked like.
I clearly remember the moment when I was 16-years-old, browsing through feminist literature at a local bookstore one weeknight after I received my driver’s license, and I had the epiphany that my life didn’t have to revolve around what boys/men thought of me and my end goal in life didn’t have to be getting married. It is sad how revolutionary that thought felt at the time.
So I get how hard not seeking or wanting random male attention is when male attention is what we’ve been told validates us. But I also believe in the importance of trying to stop. We are SO MUCH more than what random men on the street think of us…and honestly, many of them don’t even see what we look like as they’re zipping by in cars. They just see we look female-ish and so they yell stuff at us. We are also SO MUCH more than just our relationships with boys/men (and many of us have no desire to even have relationships with boys/men)!
So, without further ado, here’s what Caroline has to say on this topic:
“1) Stop seeking male attention.
Most women have been taught that heterosexual male attention is the Holy Grail and its hard to reject this system of validation, but we must. We give our power away when we engage in habitual body monitoring so we can be visually pleasing to others. The ways in which we seek attention for our bodies varies by sexuality, race, ethnicity, and ability, but the template is the “male gaze.”
Heterosexual male attention is actually pretty easy to give up when you think about it.
* First, we seek it mostly from strangers we will never see again, so it doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of life. Who cares what the man in the car next to you thinks of your profile? You’ll probably never see him again.
* Secondly, men in U.S. culture are raised to objectify women as a matter of course, so an approving gaze doesn’t mean you’re unique or special, it’s something he’s supposed to do.
* Thirdly, male validation is fleeting and valueless; it certainly won’t pay your rent or get you a book deal. In fact, being seen as sexy hurts at least as much as it helps women.
* Lastly, men are terrible validators of physical appearance because so many are duped by make-up, hair coloring and styling, surgical alterations, girdles, etc. If I want an evaluation of how I look, a heterosexual male stranger is one of the least reliable sources on the subject.
Fun related activity: When a man cat calls you, respond with an extended laugh and declare, “I don’t exist for you!” Be prepared for a verbally violent reaction as you are challenging his power as the great validator. Your gazer likely won’t even know why he becomes angry since he’s just following the societal script that you’ve just interrupted.”
