I Think We Should Have a Collective Response To Strangers Who Tell Us To Smile
Recently, two men I don’t know from a crack in the sidewalk really fucking pissed me off.
Yesterday I had to haul an ungodly amount of laundry to the dry cleaners about five blocks up the hill from my apartment. The overflow of dirty dress shirts and sweaty silk dresses had gotten so bad I was forced to stuff everything in my old-lady grocery shopping cart instead of the eco-friendly-because-I-reuse-it-so-much Ikea bag from like four years ago. Yes, I looked homeless.
I knew walking past the bus stop would be problematic as it’s the equivalent of a construction site. I got maybe three cart wheels away when a man yelled out how beautiful my hair was. I smiled, nodded, said “Thank you” and keep on pushing. But, of course, it didn’t end there.
“Do you fix it yourself?” I doubted the seriousness of this question, since it was coming from a balding man with paint-splattered jeans. I just ignored it and continued on my way. I’d already been polite enough. More polite than I had to be, since being polite isn’t the law. He kept yelling though, even when I crossed the street and I tuned him out like so much of the white noise in the urban jungle — cars honking, people cursing, etc.
“Miss? Miss! MISS!! Do you speak English?”
At this point, he was right behind me waving a wayward dress shirt in my direction. Apparently, in my haste to mind my business, one of my boyfriend’s shirts got lost to the cause. The man was pissed I didn’t sit and talk with him long enough to figure that out.
“I mean, these are your clothes not mine. What do I care?”
I thanked him again, grabbed the button-down from his fist and yanked my cart full of laundry the rest of the way. Did he deserve a “thank you”? I don’t know. Perhaps. But I was still annoyed.
The next morning, as I performed my daily routine of scrolling through tweets before taking my dog Miles for a walk, I came across something almost eerily prescient. It was a snippet of an interview with author Junot Diaz and NPR: “I grew up in a world…where largely I wasn’t really encouraged to imagine women as fully human.”
I contemplated the power of that quote while out on the street with Miles. Diaz is taking responsibility in a way for his own actions, even though he says they are involuntary. Just as I’ve been conditioned to be polite to men even as they overreach, men have been taught to ignore my discomfort because my value in our interaction is inherently less than.
And wouldn’t you know, while thinking thoughts in my own head, my sacred space, and therefore not being truly aware of the people around me, another micro-sexist incident walked right into my line of sight.
A large man who looked to be sane and in his mid-40s walked a fluffy white dog down the street Miles and I were about to cross. Still contemplating the meaning of Diaz’s quote and how men need to reevaluate their cloudy perceptions of privacy when it comes to women, I glanced at this dude’s dog, smiled and kept on contemplating. I had a running dialogue going in my head that I didn’t want to disrupt.
“Hey. Hey! HEY!” he called from the street. Thinking there was some emergency happening in the millisecond it took for our paths to cross, I turned ever so slightly.
“If I’m not afraid to speak, then why are you?”
Are you fucking kidding me? Could this really be happening? That as I was mulling over the imbalance between men and women in the public square, some strange man who I have never seen before demands that I speak to him only because he would like to speak to me?
Of course I was so mad that I smiled. “Oh,” I said through gritted teeth. “Hello.” Because that’s exactly what he wanted, I guess. To get an insincere greeting from a woman he doesn’t know only because he could.
Fuming, when I got home I immediately Googled the rest of Diaz’s quote.
“I was in fact pretty much — by the larger culture, by the local culture, by people around me, by people on TV — encouraged to imagine women as something slightly inferior to men. And so I think that a lot of guys, part of our journey is wrestling with, coming to face, our limited imagination and growing in a way that allows us not only to imagine women as fully human, but to imagine the things that we do to women — that we often do blithely, without thinking, we just sort of shrug off — as actually deeply troubling and as hurting another human being.”
None of the microaggressions that I experienced in the last two days were life threatening, not in a physical sense anyway. I wasn’t touched, but I still felt threatened and reverted back to the safe baseline of feminine politeness when all I wanted to say was, “Mind your fucking business,” or, “I’m not afraid of talking to you, I simple don’t want to,” — or silence.
I’m ready to wrestle with my own limitations and to start re-imagining my part in this screwed-up social hierarchy. First, I’m gonna figure out a stock answer, a go-to, for when I don’t want to speak or otherwise engage with men. I’m gonna recite it like a mantra until it’s written on my bones. I’m thinking something assertive and lady-cop sounding like, “Your attention is unwanted. Stand down. Now.” But I’d rather it rhyme because I’m ridiculous.
What do you say to men who try to make you play by their rules?
This post originally appeared on XOJane. Republished with permission. Click here for more Helena on XOJane!
And I thought the older I got, the less of this I would have to go through. It still happens and it makes me angry, so angry that it’s a good thing I don’t carry a gun. Although, I plan one getting my license, soon.
And it’s not just the older ones that do this. We need movement, ya’ll!! for real!
I wish there was a standard way to acknowledge but keep it moving like a nod perhaps? I too am annoyed when people presume that because I am outside that I must be looking for conversation while waiting for the bus or the light to change…I don’t get that….and I think telling anyone who is not your family or friend to smile is rude. You don’t know what happened to them that day or what they are dealing with and if they are not willing to share that information with you then keep ion moving. I recall meeting some friends for brunch at a fancy restaurant so slightly dressed up. And I was running down the stairs to catch the train and this random man came up to me and was like why you so mad. I did NOT appreciate that comment! I was in a great mood..just running for the subway train…after that I was slightly annoyed to say the least.
The “you wouldn’t say that to a man” line is one I’ve used before. I tend to get the “smile, you look mean” comment. My answer “obviously it didn’t stop you from opening your mouth”. I’m tired of men dictating my personal actions in a public space. I’ve been run up on, chased down, stared down, harassed at my job, etc. and then demanded to smile. I’m not a puppet. This isn’t a minstrel show. I promptly correct them with a quickness. Usually the insults start flying or the bitter woman comments commence. I don’t ‘owe’ you a smile because you have an outtie and I have an innie, it’s sexist and demeaning. Sad thing is it’s already happening to my 14 year old daughter with boys in her school telling/demanding her to smile. Ugh.
Quite often I hear and see women and men state that smiling makes a woman more approachable. That is fine, but my experience has been the exact opposite, where I am told to smile and have men approach me frequently despite having body language that indicates I am not open to conversation. These same men will go on to tell me that I am ‘mean’ because I didn’t play their game of flirting.
I’d hate to minimize the author’s perceptions, but while reading the article, I was waiting for the punch line, for something slimy to happen. To sum it up, the author took offense to a stranger who eventually helped her out with her laundry and a fellow dog walker trying to make chit chat.
What’s wrong with this culture? We smile for cameras and Facebook but we scowl at our neighbors.
I’m not naive, either. I’ve been heckled passing large groups of men and I’ve gotten the “Girl, smile” when it’s obvious that their gaze lingered elsewhere. It’s gross, it’s embarrassing, and we should fight against such things. But what was described in the article didn’t really seem like such.
I would say that she is highlighting the microaggressions that women have to navigate on a daily basis. These are representative of a patriarchal society and is the basis of rape culture.
I used to hear “smile” or “why do you look so mad” all the time for like 6 years. It was almost always men who said it. It used to annoy me so much, because sometimes I really was having a hard day and did not feel like smiling. Or sometimes I was ok, but still didn’t look happy. Now, I don’t get those comments anymore. Can’t remember the last time I did, and when I look back, it was because I was generally unhappy (depressed, actually) and it showed all over.
Let me ask this question, though. Who actually walks around smiling when nobody is speaking to them?
Street walkers, strippers and the like. Thats who.
Many people walk around with smiles on their faces. Some just so happen to be in a good mood most of the time, and it will show on your face.
Plenty of people do. Not everyone is mean mugging 24/7. Even while jogging and huffing and puffing – I make it a point to wave at fellow walkers/ runners. Now a days, when I do walk in my neighborhood or downtown and someone glances in my direction in an attempt to get my attention, I will proactively smile before hearing them out – whether it’s someone coming out of their Mazzarati or a panhandler with like three teeth. And I will engage in conversation – it’s just a neighborly thing to do. If things are going in an ugly direction, I will shut it down.
I know several people may ridicule me for this, but I did alot of mean mugging before, especially as a teen – but as I got older and got more serious about my faith, the joy in the inside came out and manifested on the outside. But yeah, faith and maturity. And a thing about maturity, I do admit that it’s hard for teenage girls – at such a young age, we shouldn’t have to be fielding the advances of older men. As a society, we have failed woefully in protecting our young girls from such predators. As a woman in my 20s, I can handle myself and know how to adequately assess risk. However, as a teen I wish there were more people – men and women – to stand up for us. I was dodging cat calls and public comments about my body as young as 12, and because we adults are with earphones in our ears and busy “minding our own business,” I can’t remember a time in which adults nearby came to my rescue at that age.
I know independence is a essential American virtue, but at the end of the day, we all go back and live within a community.
*MASERATI, not Mazzarati.
My bad – my ignorance towards the finer things in life is showing. Yeah, cars are not my thing – except to get me from point A to B.
Echi, but I mean, those are extremes–”mean mugging” and smiling at nobody in particular. I think it is very normal to have a neutral or pleasant look on your face. But I (or anyone else) would look crazy walking down the street alone and have a grin or smile plastered on my face unless someone looks me in the eye, nods their head, or says hi.
I just never see anyone–male or female–walking around with a permanent smile for no apparent reason. Maybe it’s where I live…
I didn’t exactly mean plastered smile a la Michelle-Newsweek-cover type smile – but more as you describe, a pleasant look. And like you said, unhappiness shows on the face. Content with self and with life, also shows as well.