It’s part of everyday life. Appreciate it for the compliment it is.
In theory, I think they are stupid and demeaning, but in real life, I almost always laugh because it reminds me of this thing that happened to me:
Several years ago, I used to pass a construction site on my daily walk to work. There were always many catcalls. They catcalled every woman who passed by, so my own personal catcalls weren’t based on anything like how good (or not) I looked or anything. As time went on, I became more and more resentful and annoyed by this.
So one day, I was walking by, and one of the workers calls out “hey baby!” which, of course, I ignored. Then again, same guy, “hey mami!” And again “hey honey!” I am now marching along in stony silence, making exasperated faces, I’m sure. This continues until I am almost at the end of the construction block, when the guy calls out “HEY LADY, I’m trying to tell you that your skirt is all caught up in the back of your panty hose!” Which it was, it turns out. I had been marching down the street with my skirt caught in my hose, exposing my rear end. So I had to say “Oh! Okay! Thanks!” as I yanked out my skirt.
That is probably one of the top five hilarious things that has ever happened to me, and I laugh every time I think about it (come on, I was walking the streets of New York with my butt exposed to all and sundry!), so that’s what catcalls always remind me of now (and I always check my skirt when it happens, but so far no repeats).
I mostly just ignore it, which I learned to do because when I was a teen it was more likely that some jerk would yell a comment out the window at me about my weight or a derogatory compliment rather than just a ‘hey baby’ or something similar.
I don’t mind appreciative looks when I’m dressed up though.
I’ll miss them when I’m old.
It makes me sad that there are still men who believe they’re superior to women when I’ve got to hear their pathetic inability to string together a sentence every day. Cat calls (and that term is a euphemism. How about pig grunts? Loud hissing? Blow job sounds?) are pathetic, and while it’s all well and good to say ‘Heeey, can’t you take a compliment?’ I’m not sure 12-year-old girls feel this way. I didn’t. Still don’t.
I’ve actually noticed women workers on construction sites lately and the difference is phenomenal – women and girls can actually walk by without fear, just because of the presence of a single 110 lb woman on the crew. It’s amazing.
Street harassment pretty much says to me that since I’m a woman walking out in public I am inviting attention and have a duty to speak with every male stranger I pass. Try talking back or even ignoring some guys. Automatically, they switch from sleazy come ons to full-on aggression, ‘Stuck up bitch’ and all that. What if women (and no, not all hot young things) were to start engaging in discussions and yelling at business men while they try to go about their day? The only women who do that are prostitutes, as far as I know. And I’ve never heard a woman tell a random man to ‘Smile, baby.’ Because obviously he’s got important things to think about.
Utterings to friends like ‘Daaamn’ or polite one-liners like ‘You’re beautiful, miss’ are fine (though I don’t count on them to bolster my self esteem). Oddly enough, that sort of thing seems most common in New York, while Paris is the place I’ve been the most groped and spit at. Huh.
That part there, I agree with exactly. I’d complete the sentence by saying I find it frightening, and I feel that if it escalates I will be blamed for however I handled it, from polite smile to ignoring it to glaring to telling him off.
While I know some guys just consider this fun, plenty of women change their travel patterns and look behind themselves for days due to stuff like this. Do you really want to take the chance your “fun” will affect someone like that?
I recommend the book “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin deBecker, who talks about how criminals use these type of comments and situations to initiate attacks against women. No doubt a lot of guys who make these comments are having harmless fun, but I don’t have the time to sort them out.
My advice to guys is to compliment the women you know, who probably feel they don’t get enough compliments, twice as much.
There’s times when I hate it and times when I don’t mind. A pack of guys banded together is always intimidating, especially when I am by myself. When I am just walking along a street or whatever, going about my day and I feel like I am walking through a lineup of men doing that, I hate it. I find I encounter it most in bigger cities or places with lots of tourists, like beach locations. I think the worst place for it I have been was London, but I think that was mostly from foreigners and not locals. But sometimes, if I am dressed to go out, especially to a bar or club, and a guy just makes an appreciative comment, or says “nice” or something, I can be flattered. If he is obnoxious or obscene about it though, it feels threatening.
It doesn’t make me ever want to approach the guy to talk to him, so if that is their goal it never works. If a guys comes and talks to me or compliments me directly I am much more likely to talk to him back, if I feel like he is talking to someone else about me, or making comments loudly for me to hear, not so much. When I was single, anyway. Now that I am married I don’t engage much anymore, although a compliment or a nice guy will get a smile or friendly conversation.
It really depends on context, but it never works as a pickup line. I suspect it is more for their own and their friends’ benefit anyway.
I do miss them, now that I’m old.
But only the occasional wolf whistle types. The obnoxious comments are not missed at all.
Sometimes a difference in degree is a difference in kind. Blow job motions? Yeah, pretty disgusting (not intimidating, to me, in broad daylight on a city street. If I feel like dignifying it with a reply, flipping them off usually suffices). On the other hand, recently as I was crossing the street a passing bike messenger said “have a nice day pretty lady!” as he zoomed by and actually it kind of brightened my day.
So for me:
overtly sexual remarks: insulting/objectifying
Mild compliments: fine
Twenty years ago I hated them. Now, well I can’t remember the last time I heard one so I would probably, secretly appreciate it.
Now the guys who yell stuff at my 14 year old daughter, I have all kinds of torture fantasies about those guys.
That’s the thing of it - they aren’t compliments. They are harassing objectification. When my husband says I’m beautiful, that’s a compliment. When someone at work says they like my blouse, that’s a compliment. When a guy on the street yells that he’d like to fuck me, that’s not a compliment.
I don’t draw a line; I don’t appreciate people I don’t know yelling anything at me. It’s none of their damned business.
When I was fat, they slowed down to moo at me and call me an ugly bitch. Now that I’m thinner, they slow down to try to grab my tits and call me baby. I am not foolish enough to believe that the latter is truly any more complimentary than the former.
I hate them. Luckily, I know enough words of the languages of the major ethnic groups here to tell most of them off in their language.
Damn. Now I feel kind of guilty for enjoying them. Well…not guilty, exactly, but bad that I’m maybe encouraging/condoning a behavior that makes others so unhappy.
Granted, as I mentioned in my OP, sometimes they do suck, but I rarely feel threatened by them. And usually for me, it’s never things like, “I wanna fuck you” but more like comments on how sexy I am or surreptitious looks/leers.
I’m in this camp.
It kind of depends.
A guy walking behind me saying barely audible things about my body, clothes, or whatever, is creepy and scary.
A honk or a catcall from a passing car generally makes me feel a strange mixture of annoyed/embarrassed/amused.
An unexpected “How you doing, beautiful?” from a guy holding a door open or passing me on the street can give me a little smile/ego boost.
A stranger sitting next to me at the bar who says, “Smile, gorgeous” makes me want to rip his face off. For whatever reason, I really hate the idea that some stranger believes he has the right to command me to alter my expression to suit his whim. What if I’m thinking about my dead mother, while I hoist this glass in her memory?
And any guy I don’t know who feels entitled to come up and touch me really freaks me out.
And DESPITE the fact that I’ve read and reread The Gift of Fear, I STILL automatically worry about saying anything rude to the person who has just rudely approached me in each of these situations. (Well, except the car horn one – that one’s usually too fleeting to allow of a response, anyway.)
Wow. As a man, I can’t imagine it being OK if I made any kind of obvious signal that I’m attracted, to somebody I didn’t know. I’d even feel bad if I realized somebody noticed me looking at them with unstated appreciation.