That’s a weird piece of commentary.
Ditto.
I wasn’t aware that a woman’s visceral reaction to taunting and leering were supposed to be “becoming.”
How dare she not enjoy the unwanted attention!
Yeah, her face looks like she’s scared shitless, but trying to muster as much dignity (and no eye contact) as possible. And pulling her sweater closed is a dead giveaway.
Unregistered Bull, others have said it better than I ever could, so I’ll just add a hearty fuckwit!
SHAMELESS HIJACK
The American Girl photo was first published as part of a magazine article called “Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone,” which was promoting the idea that young women traveling alone might face some situations which seem intimidating at first, but are actually part of the value of experiencing new situations and cultures. (The only other image I have ever seen from that original series was – based on my own memory, so could be faulty – was a much more mundane shot of a young woman trying to read a map.) The shot was semi-staged, the men were random guys on the street, and the photographer had her friend walk through the crowd to have her picture taken. The coolness of the photo, I think, is that it’s a strong image that just clicks with many viewers to form an instant emotional response, even though those responses are varied – someone is “certain” she is terrified, while someone else is “certain” she is disdainful. It’s an image that makes you supply your own story when you look at it, and there’s not a single correct interpretation.
Obviously the answer is to gather up all those leering, wolf whistling men from Italy and beat the living shit out of them. But not kill them as that would be overkill, right Unregistered Bull?
Man, I hate that picture.
We never even learned about him or most of the other players in the Civil Rights era at all. I heard about him when his mom came and spoke at the Third World Center in college and showed the picture. To a tiny audience.
What don’t you get, you with the face? The reason for the existence of the woman in the photograph is to be attractive to Rigamarole. If she isn’t attractive to him, she isn’t worthy of notice. Sheesh, keep up. 
We’re supposed to smile and be pretty all the time!
By the way, Unregistered Bull, you troglodyte, what do I do if I don’t have a husband or father or other man who can claim ownership of me to whom I can report that I’ve been sexually harassed? Who’s going to beat up and torture the 14-year-olds who whistle at me then?
Updating this zombie thread:
I was reading that article yesterday. While it’s an interesting admission, in my view it really changes very little about our understanding of the Till case.
Firstly, i had always assumed that she had, at the very least, exaggerated the nature of Till’s interaction with her. I never took her claims for the unvarnished truth in the first place.
Secondly, and much more importantly, even if she hadn’t lied—even if events had transpired exactly as described in her testimony—it wouldn’t mitigate, to even the tiniest fraction of a degree, the disgusting and inhuman actions of her husband and her brother-in-law.
The guy was murdered in an especially brutal way, over bullshit.
Yes it has.
Sometimes “things” just need to happen. Unfortunately “things” never happened to them.
I have confronted men who whistled or made comments to me on the street, because they are not welcome, and yes, do feel like harassment.
That does not mean that, whatever the color of a teenager who did the same thing, if my husband suggested that he and his friends should drag the kid from the back of a car and then tie a weight to him and throw him off a bridge, I would be all for it. I wouldn’t handle harassment from a teen the say way I’d handle it from an adult, and I would even want my husband to punch an adult and leave it there.
Now, I did know a guy who got fired for whistling at woman from his place of work, but this was after it got back to his boss that women who worked at the building across the street were walking all the way around the back of their building to get to work to avoid him, and it wasn’t unreasonable to suspect they’d lost customers. That guy got it pretty hard, but he was a repeat offender, and was making his place of work look bad.
Whether or not this was harassment back when it happened to me in the 80s and 90s, and considering how the behavior was generally viewed in the 1950s, a salient feature of the story is that if Till had been white, he would not have been lynched. The husband of the woman he whistled at might had had a word with either him or his father, but I doubt anything worse would have happened. If her husband was a really jealous hothead, Till might have gotten punched. And that would have been the end of it.
There’s nothing wrong, disloyal, or racist in saying that what Till did was maybe a little sleazy. That is hardly the same thing as saying he deserved what he got. The people who lynched him should all have done life terms in prison, and it is a crime that they did not.
Can we get some insight on how Till felt about global climate change and his position on LGBTQ rights? I can’t decide until I know this.
The woman in the picture of Italy said the picture is of a having a wonderful time.
http://www.today.com/id/44182286/ns/today-today_news/t/subject-american-girl-italy-photo-speaks-out/
In the context of its time (apart from enraging racists) it did not have “sleazy” connotations.
As a further update to this thread, many if not most colleges and universities now proscribe this behavior. According to the University of Kansas’ guide on the subject, sexual harassment includes:
“Staring in a sexually suggestive or offensive manner, or whistling.”
I gather that they’re referring to the classic “wolf whistle”, but to be on the safe side maybe it’s best to avoid whistling any tune, including the overture to The Barber of Seville, “Tea For Two” and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road”.
Reading this zombie, interesting how much mores have changed in 10 years. In 2007, most people would have rolled their eyes at wolf whistling being “sexual harassment”. These days? Yeah, its part of “rape culture”, “patriarchy”, #YesAllMen, etc etc.
FTR, I don’t thinkwolf whistling at a woman or anyone really is ok and it proper circumstances it absolutely can be and is sexual harassment.
Every word of this.
Wolf whistles have always been demeaning to women, even in the 1950s. It’s just that once upon a time, it was perfectly OK to demean women. Look at some magazine ads from the 1950s.
I don’t get whistled at anymore, but when I did, it was a long time before the OP was posted, and I considered it demeaning.
None of which changes the fact that Emmett Till got lynched because he was black. He didn’t get lynched because of anything he did. He was a northerner, and white people assumed for no reason that they were “uppity.” Traveling to the south for black people who lived in the north was dicey in the Jim Crow era. There was actually a book published to help black people who lived in the north and wanted to travel south avoid special hazards.