20-Year-Old Exposes Catcallers With Selfies for a Month – and They Don’t Mind
What do catcallers love? Attention
Photo: Instagram/dearcatcallers
What do catcallers love? Attention. That’s why they’re hollering at you every single time you’re walking down the street. They want your attention. So what happens when you give it to them?
Noa Jansma, a 20-year-old Amsterdam-based student wanted to bring awareness to the objectification that women face every day but Instagramming selfies of her predators and posting it on social media. She did this for an entire month, and the weirdest part – or maybe not so weird – is that they didn’t care one bit.
She called her Instagram account Dear Catcallers and began the month-long project on the first of September. She wrote: “Since many people don’t know how often, or in whatever context, ‘catcalling’ happens, I’ll be showing my catcallers within a period of a month. By making the selfie, both objectifier and the object, standing in front of the catcallers represents the reversed power ratio, which is caused by this project.” She added: “Please join me in the fight and post your own #dearcatcallers or send me a DM.”
Here’s some of her selfies that she took:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZHFcNQlFMp/?taken-by=dearcatcallers
Each one is more disturbing than the next. You would think that these men would be embarrassed about being outed in such a way, but they weren’t. They seemed to like the fact that she was taking a selfie with them. It’s quite appalling. The exchange alone is frightening. She put herself in an extreme situation by getting closer to them. Typically when you get catcalled you try to walk faster to get away from them, but this woman was brave for exposing them in the manner she did.
The good news is that some states and countries are fighting back against being catcalled. In New York, a catcaller can get fined $250 for street harassment.
Jansma said in her last post that she wants to give her account to women around the world so they too can expose their catcallers. So this is by no means over.
