Oh geez.

XLS-Medical Fat Binder conducted a study with an unknown quantity of dieters whom they found through an unknown way and they concluded that:

“More than half would like to be on the receiving end of a wolf whistle and 28% regard this as one of the biggest motivators to weight loss.”

Overall, the study found that people are more motivated to stick to their diet if they themselves notice their weight loss and if other people notice it too and pay them a compliment.

I’m all for being healthier and for genuine, appropriate and wanted compliments, and I get how positive feedback can help someone stay motivated as they work to achieve a difficult goal.

But I’m NOT for encouraging men to vocally sexually objectify women on the streets and I’m very against the Daily Mail writing this in an article about the study:

“We may tut and scowl and whisper obscenities under our breath when men wolf-whistle in our direction – but secretly we love it.”

No, “we” don’t. The vast majority of us are annoyed, angered, and upset by it, especially if we’re lesbians, rape survivors, or people who are harassed on a regular basis. Don’t perpetuate tired old lies! And don’t contribute to rape culture.

Street harassment, including “wolf whistling,” is disrespectful and objectifying and it contributes to the prevalence of gender violence. One in three women will be raped, beaten or abused in her lifetime worldwide!! Companies and people should be putting their energy toward fixing that, not on dieting. (Riots not diets)

But since this questionable study is out there and is getting covered in the news, I feel I should delve into the issue further.

I, too, found some women (but not 50 percent!!) who liked being whistled at when I conducted a study in 2008 as part of my book research.

I surveyed more than 800 women from 23 countries about street harassment, and about 25 percent said they liked being whistled at, too. What’s telling though is that almost no woman liked being commented on, touched, followed, or masturbated/flashed at, yet too often a “wolf whistle” escalates into one of those behaviors.

I thin it’s important to look at why this many women say they want to be whistled at or like it (and I cover these reasons more in chapter five of my book).

1. Severity and Frequency: When I filtered out the experiences of those women who said they liked being whistled at, I found that, compared to women who did not like it, they were rarely harassed and few of them had experienced extreme forms of harassment like stalking or groping. So yes, perhaps if the worst behavior a woman has experienced is whistling from men and she only experiences it once in a while, she may not mind it. But for most women, that isn’t the case.

Of the women I surveyed, over 80 percent were the target of a sexually explicit comment, 75 percent were followed, and over 50 percent were groped/sexually touched. Most women experienced street harassment on at least a weekly basis.

2. Context Matters: Nearly all women who took my survey said they didn’t like street harassment – including wolf whistling – if there were multiple men harassing one of her, if it was dark out or if she was in an unfamiliar area, or if the man was much older or much younger than her.

If the dieting survey asked if a woman would like to be whistled at by a group of men while she walked alone on a street unfamiliar to her after dark, I’m sure fewer women would have said they want that to happen.

3. Traditional Viewpoints: When Carol Brooks Gardner researched street harassment in Indiana, she found that the small percent of women in her study who liked mild forms of harassment, including whistling, were also more likely to be apolitical and traditional, believing things like men should be the breadwinners and women the homemakers, harassment was a legitimate way for men to vocalize their appreciation of women, and men should initiate relationships.

4. Engrained Sexualization: Perhaps the strongest reason why some women say they like being whistled at or wish men did whistle at them is the engrained sexualization of girls and women. The results of the 2007 report by the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls found that overwhelmingly, girls are sexualized frequently in the media, by parents and other adults, by friends, and even by themselves.

Nearly everything girls and women are encouraged to do for self-improvement is geared toward gaining the attention of men (look at any woman’s magazine to see how true that is). Since street harassment is male attention, women who have internalized the idea that their worth lies in how much attention they get from men may like the mild forms. In the dieting study in particular, it’s likely that many of the respondents were losing weight to try to be more attractive to men so getting any kind of attention from them would feel like an achievement.

Conclusion: I write a lot about what men can do to change their attitudes about street harassment, but this a reminder that many women need to make attitude adjustments, too. Women are intelligent, thoughtful, creative, athletic, powerful, empathetic people. We do not need to be validated by men on the streets who whistle at us like we’re dogs (no offense to dogs, I love them!).

Instead of receiving a self-esteem boost from some guy on the street who knows how to whistle and feels self-important enough to publicly evaluate a woman’s looks, I hope women can find self-esteem boosts from being good friends or family members, getting a good grade or feedback on a work project, helping out in their community, advocating for an issue, looking out for those in need, and learning something new.

(Thank you to reader Jenn for bringing this story to my attention)