A Landscape of Harassment

Gentlemen might prefer blondes, but ladies ought to love The Real Blonde,for this is a woman's movie. In the midst of its other socially astute criticism, the film offers up a vehement attack on a woman's worst enemy: the uninvited comment.

Every woman is familiar with it. As she walks down the street, there is always a man who feels the need to say something. He is utterly offensive in what he says and leaves the woman--who did not ask to be noticed or verbally assaulted--feeling slimed.

The movie depicts this awful feeling with its antithesis in Joe (Matthew Modine), a woman's hero. I would take him home and frame him. Joe offers to take a bullet on behalf of a stranger whose boyfriend is beating her on the street. When Joe sees an old man making a lewd pass at a girl young enough to be his granddaughter, Joe asks him to consider his conduct and the age difference. I recently had an experience much like that of Joe's girlfriend, Mary, who regularly suffers body-inspired comments from a particular dirty man on her way to work. While watching this movie, I thought where is my Joe when I need him?

For me, Cambridge has been a landscape of harassment disturbingly like that of the movie. A few weeks ago I was headed to the Kennedy School library to do reading. Lost in my own thoughts, I heard a man's voice scream, "nice ass!" The comment brought me up short. It seemed too vulgar--it was broad daylight on a main thoroughfare. (Also, being at Harvard has made me rusty. Such a thing is commonplace in New York, but Harvard men are almost outrageously tame and generally keep ribaldry to a tolerable level.) I couldn't imagine who would say such a thing or who might be on the receiving end of the comment. My head turned toward the sound. A further comment greeted me as I realized he was talking to me: "I want to eat you!" the stranger enthusiastically continued. That was enough. My feet flew in the direction of the nearest door of the K-school.

Running/ignoring isn't always the most accessible option. I learned that the hard way. When buying myself frozen yogurt recently, I encountered the security guard at Temptations, a man old enough to be my grandfather. It was of great interest to him that I was a Harvard student--or so he pretended. He quizzed me about my age, what I study, where I'm from, on and on. And all I wanted was the dessert which seemed forever in coming.

I felt like I was at a Senate confirmation hearing. This man just wouldn't stop. Any outsider could easily have seen that I was uncomfortable and not enjoying myself. The one employee had mysteriously disappeared after the phone rang, and there I was, all alone in the store with this weird man who informed the employee (when he returned) that he was my boyfriend and that I was buying him ice cream. He repeated it. The employee looked at me and then at the security guard. Meanwhile I was furiously showing my change into my wallet, fumbling because I was so agitated. "Man, you have to stop staring at the customers!" The guard played off the comment as if the employee were clueless. Are brush-offs somehow not a universal language?

Mary, brilliant Mary, crystallized so many of my thoughts in the movie: Do these men actually think that they will elicit a positive response? Do they truly expect a woman to turn around and introduce herself? Is there the prospect of a relationship or casual sex in mind, or is degrading a stranger the entire thrill? I wish I knew the answer. I also wish that men didn't think this behavior or any other of their stunts make them charming. They don't. I prefer a gentleman.