Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

A blog about words, wordplay, and etymology, with slightly more than occasional political rants.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Hey, beautiful

Some lady made a video of herself walking through the streets of New York getting cat called right and left. A lot of people watched it, then a lot of other people were like, "...uh, why is every single dude in this video a person of color?" 
So I'm not posting it, but instead I'm posting the video above. 
I don't have super strong feelings on the subject; either I've become hideous or people in Canton are way more civilized than people in Akron or Cleveland, but I can't remember the last time I got catcalled.
I do remember some of the first, when I was 11 or 12. Some drunk dude screaming "Hey little girl, you want some candy?" (his much more reasonable drunk friend revealed that they did not, in fact, have candy, much to my dismay). Walking a babysitting charge at 13 and having a dude offer to father my next kid in language not appropriate for a teenager, let alone the 2-year-old in the stroller I was pushing. 
And that's just the compliments. Dudes seemed to always feel inspired to loudly announce what they thought of my sexual orientation. Either that or I was always walking in at the tail end of really spirited debates about John Updike.  
It didn't destroy my world or anything, but creepers don't check ID before sexually harassing women. 

I feel like his "manswer" would change if it was his 12-year-old being "complimented."
PS, I posted the video above for no other reason than the awesomeness of her facial expressions, though the best part by far is where dude says that women who don't want to get catcalled shouldn't live in New York. They should come to Canton - you've got to deal with coyote calls and the occasional muskrat attack, but it is what it is.

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