Friday, March 7, 1997
HARASSMENT:
A woman is more than the sum total of her body parts
One hot day the summer after my freshman year, I decided to take
the two-hour bus ride from my house to UCLA. The bus was crowded,
and it reached maximum capacity when we hit downtown. This gave
people the excuse to squeeze and shove and get too close.
I didn’t notice much about the man behind me until I felt
something moving. What was that thing on my butt? He had begun to
rub his erection on my ass and along my thighs. What was I supposed
to do? Make a scene? Let this asshole fondle me? Move away and
pretend nothing happened?
Nervously, I rearranged the math book I was holding and started
thrusting it back  HARD! Over and over again, I thrust my
book back and elbowed that asshole in the ribs as hard and as
casually as I could. He stopped and nonchalantly moved to the back
of the bus.
When I got off, I couldn’t get rid of that sick and dirty
feeling. I couldn’t forget his penis touching me where it was not
allowed. I could feel it again when I sat down, feel it again when
I stood up, feel it at night when I went to bed. And every time
time I remembered, I felt my stomach turn, I wanted to throw
up.
I was mad at myself. I reprimanded myself for wearing those
tight denim shorts even though it was well over 90 degrees that
day. I felt like it was my fault he had violated me.
Attacks like this are not rare. Most women can tell stories
about at least one or two such physical violations. Many can relate
worse. The most common violations are verbal attacks, and they
begin at a much earlier age.
The girls that developed early can relate to this story. You
see, men (or at least boys) have always hypothesized that a girl’s
breast size is equivalent to her GPA. That means that A average
girls wear an A cup, B average girls wear a B cup, C average Â
C cup, D average  D cup. Smart girls have flat chests. Dumb
girls have big breasts. I was smart and an early bloomer. "She
stuffs!" they concluded.
The only fight I’ve ever had was in the seventh grade.
Testosterone- induced bravery and a big crowd that morning gave one
boy the balls to insult me. "Nowami stuffs her bra!" he said, and
the crowd of boys laughed.
RAGE. That’s all I felt. I was sick and tired of the comments
made for the past two years about a biological clock I had no
control over.
I stormed over there and somehow I pushed him in-between the
lunch benches. I started smacking him, kicking him, punching him,
damaging his private parts. "I do not stuff my bra!" I said. The
boys stood amazed as the boy lay on the floor in a fetal
position.
I never got in trouble. He was ashamed to admit he had gotten
beaten up by a girl. They didn’t bother me as much after that.
When young girls start to develop, we say that they are
over-sensitive, that they are insecure and awkward in their adult
bodies. This is not the case. They are hyper-aware. They suddenly
realize the degrading way in which men view women. These 11- to
15-year-old girls with women’s bodies are looked at in a different
way than when they were children.
They feel men’s eyes  running over their breasts,
caressing their thighs, reaching up and grabbing their asses. We
say that they’re just sensitive. What they are doing is noticing
those things that adult women have trained themselves to tune
out.
We pretend not to notice. We pretend not to see the eyes that
analyze our legs, our behinds, our waists, our breasts, our elbows,
our ankles and every other part of our bodies. If we thought about
these things, we would never leave the house. Early bloomers
learned early how to camouflage their bodies with big T-shirts and
bulky sweaters. We learned by age 12 what our best and worst
features were, how to play them up or tone them down. We learned
that clothes or make-up could hide or reveal these features and
used them accordingly. I don’t tie a sweatshirt around my waist
because I think the weather will get cold.
These conflicting desires  to attract men or to protect
ourselves and our bodies  influence the way we dress. To
attract or not to attract? That is the question we often face when
we open up our closets every morning.
It is these outside influences  daily comments,
compliments and insults, lewd looks and admiring stares Â
which affect the way we dress and the way we view our bodies. Media
images aside, it is these factors which shape our relationships
with our bodies. I used to hate my body. I hated the breasts that
brought undue and unwanted attention, breasts which reduced me to a
body part and not a person. It’s taken me a long time to accept my
body. For this reason, I dress in a way that plays down my body
when on campus.
I rarely wear make-up and I live in a uniform consisting of
jeans and a T-shirt. But when I do go out, it takes me two hours to
do my hair and another half-hour for makeup. I tend to wear those
short little dresses and cleavage-revealing tops that my mom
doesn’t like to let me out of the house with.
So when I go out, I’m used to getting the attention that I shun
when I’m on campus. Once, while standing at the bar of a cheesy
dance club, some suave little Don Juan tried to put the moves on
me. He began with casual comments, asked me to dance, asked if I’d
like a drink.
Confident in that rare "I actually worked to look this good"
mode, I refused kindly. "Thank you, no. I don’t want to dance."
When he realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere, he gave me a lewd
look and said, "You’ve got the best titties in the house." What was
I supposed to do, thank him? That wasn’t a compliment! That was
harassment.
So … do we continue to put up with this shit? Do we turn away
and pretend we don’t notice? Because it isn’t an actual rape?
Because it isn’t an actual attack? Do we accept those things which
make us uncomfortable and inconvenienced for a little while?
How do we define harassment? Is it solely a power relationship?
Can this occur among peers? Is it a touch, a word, a look? Or do
these not matter? What is a "hostile environment" anyway? My
professor staring down my blouse? My boss checking out my ass?
I have not suffered like some of my sisters. What I have
experienced is nothing in comparison to rape or molestation. We
cannot allow those violations to occur. Yet, I don’t think that any
of what I have described is tolerable either. I don’t think we
should edit ourselves, monitor our behavior, change our dress or be
ashamed of our bodies. What happened to the little girl who fought
back?