The man in the dirty sweatshirt was broad shouldered with a potbelly and spindly legs. He wore a hat to mask a splotch of uncombed hair and his smirk promised that he’d yet to brush his teeth this morning. Yet when he saw the girl in the crop top it was he who looked on in disgust. She was not thin, at least as thin as he thought she ought to be, so when she passed by he stared down into her cleavage and said, “yuck.”
I froze, shocked by what I saw unfold. I suppose I should have expected it. In a world where we dismiss stories of proposed sexual assault as locker room talk and our porn is as vile, violent, and removed from reality as possible, why would I be surprised that a man would be emboldened to publicly shame a woman he doesn’t know?
She looked around, unfastening the headphones from her ears and slowing a step. He kept walking. He looked back once, shook his head, and motored on. After a moment I was the only one standing still–the only one in a crowd of shifting students who paid any mind to what just happened.
I don’t know that other people heard. I want to think I witnessed the exchange alone–that the woman didn’t hear the sounds he made, not that she was so desensitized to the commentary and abuse that it no longer registered to her senses.
All of me wishes it wasn’t that way. The truth is Marlo Stanfield had it right all along. I want it to be one way, but it is the other way. I want to live in a world where women are respected as opposed to codified and bullied. But it is the other way. I want to feel like gender and racial equality is a thing that we all want to strive towards. But it is the other way. I want to think that these problems aren’t a central tenet of how our country was both formed and continues to function/remain a global power. But it is the other way.