lookin' goooooood

Lindsey is maybe one of the best things happening for girls on the Internet right now, and her book is going to be super important and awesome for a lot of people quite soon. She posted this Very Public Service Announcement about street harassment just one day, actually, after my most recent experience with that very thing. I am weirdly—sadly—used to this by now because, while it doesn't happen all that much to me while walking to and from work every day, it still happens more than it used to when I commuted by wheels. I'm actually not sure if it happens more than the automotive equivalent—the prolonged gawk, sometimes accompanied by slight upward chin thrust, through multiple car windows while stopped at red lights—but I guess that's another matter entirely.

At any rate, I think her message is important, small but also big. If you're a person to whom this never happens, you might not understand what we mean. Even if you're a person to whom it happens, even if it happens frequently, you might not get it. But think about what it would be like to be able to walk down the street and not have that weird feeling of dread kinda nipping at your heels the whole way, if you could meet strangers' eyes—all of them—with an upturned face and a smile, rather than ducking your head or throwing down your gaze just to try to make yourself invisible just in case they're on the verge of hollering or whistling or whooping.

Think about how it makes you feel when it happens to you, and then think about not having to feel that way ever again. And then tell me how you like it.

The day before Lindsey posted this, I got whistled at on my way home from work. Sometimes, honestly, my first reaction is to laugh, just because it sounds so silly, so cartoonishly primal, like if I did look over at whoever this guy is he'd have one hand scratching the top of his head and the other alternately digging at his armpit or throwing his own poop around. Sometimes I make an openlly disgusted face at them, without even meaning to—this happens a lot when the whistle or honk is coming from a white maintenance van, which happens a lot (those City of Decatur guys, they just gotta let you know how they feel), but which is also just so frighteningly but also hilariously cliche.

And then other times, like last Thursday, what I do is I grimace. I grimace and, like last Thursday, my first thought besides ugh is that I hope they didn't mistake my grimace for a smile. Because it's never a smile.

Lindsey also posted this clip from Def Poetry Slam a few days back, which just blew my mind and which is relevant here, too.

There are bigger fish to fry, I know, in my life and in the world. But sometimes the little things just build and build and build and build and build. And sometimes all you really want is an ice cream cone that is free to exist in this world, out and open in the public, as an ice cream cone and nothing more. And sometimes you want to exist like that, too.