Tatyana Fazlalizadeh - Stop telling women to smile: stories of street harassment and how we’re taking back our power

Text Copyright 2019 by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Art Copyright 2019 by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Cover design by Chin-Yee Lai

Cover image by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Cover copyright 2019 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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First Edition: February 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fazlalizadeh, Tatyana, author.

Title: Stop telling women to smile: stories of street harassment and how were taking back our power / Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.

Description: New York: Seal Press, [2019]

Identifiers: LCCN 2019038649 | ISBN 9781580058483 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781580058476 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Sexual harassment of women. | Sexual harassment of womenPrevention. | Sexual abuse victims.

Classification: LCC HQ1237 .F39 2019 | DDC 305.42dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038649

ISBNs: 978-1-58005-848-3 (hardcover); 978-1-58005-847-6 (ebook)

E3-20200107-JV-NF-ORI

CONTENTS

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I was still a girl when my body began to change. When it started to be ogled, stared at, whispered to, touched, followed. No sooner had I begun to understand my own developing body than it began to no longer feel like my own. It felt like a thing . A thing that men wanted.

That was when I started to feel uncomfortable, and unsafe. It seemed as though my body existed for mens pleasure, and it became something I was forced to dress myself in for others enjoyment.

I started to cover up.

I was very conscious of the clothes I wore, of not wanting to be seen. Not wanting to wear anything that was too tight or that would reveal this thing I had to carry. I wanted to hide my body so I could keep it to myself, learning and exploring and growing into it in my own time and space.

When I think about how early sexual harassment began for me, and how early it begins for so many girls, I am infuriated by the idea that before we can define ourselves within our own bodies, someone else has already determined what they are: sexual objects.

Street harassment is sexual harassment that happens in the public space. It can take the form of anything from a misguided and unwelcome comment from a passerbyHello, sweetieto cruder catcalling or explicit, often denigrating sexualization. It includes physical encounters that cross the line into assault. It can happen anywhere.

For the last several years, I have made it my mission to understand street harassment. I have asked women around the country for their definitions and the ways theyve experienced it. Ive learned from their answers that it can be defined by any behaviorcommenting, leering, or touchingthat is sexual and unwanted.

Women have described being grabbed by the hands or wrists. Having their paths blocked as they were walking. Having men whisper in their ears, standing too close, leveraging their power. Being touched on public transportation. Having kissing noises made as they pass, being followed, getting yelled at. Many women have told me that men have grabbed their genitals. Many said they had been followed while out for a run and had to stop jogging in public places.

Like so many of us, I started to experience these things when I was a child, probably around eleven or twelve years. Walking down the sidewalk or even from my mothers car to the entrance of a grocery store left me open to leering looks; some men would even try to pick me up if my mother wasnt by my side. Still, I was born and raised in Oklahoma City, which isnt a pedestrian-friendly place, and most people there dont get around by walking. That limited the opportunities for men to harass women and girls, and me. It was when I moved to Philadelphia at age seventeen that street harassment became an everyday part of my life.

Walking around in that unfamiliar city as a teenager was an entirely different beast than walking down the street in Oklahoma City. Of course, I was already familiar with the idea that my body was a thing that would be sexualized by men. The difference was that in Philadelphia, a city where walking and public transportation are common, strangers were in close proximity to my personal space and my body every day. I was struck by the sheer quantity of harassment I experienced in a single day, walking to and from school. In the fifteen-plus years since then, street harassment has continued to be a part of my daily life.

Thats why, in 2012, I started a street art series called Stop Telling Women to Smile (STWTS, for short).

Stop Telling Women to Smile is a series of posters featuring drawings of women captioned with text that speaks directly to street harassers. I created this street art series to challenge gender-based harassment in the public space. The idea is simple: I make posters I can paste onto public walls in large numbers across New York City and other cities across the country. Im a portrait artist, so I wanted the work to show the faces of women, and I wanted the women to speak directly to men who harass women on the street. I wanted the work to speak out for women when we couldnt speak up for ourselves.

Because its not easy to talk back. Sometimes I speak up for myself when I am harassed, and other times I dont. With this art project, I could take the words that swirled in my head that I didnt say aloud and put them out into the world.

The project began with three posters: one that showed a drawing of myself, the other two featuring friends of mine. The posters showing my friends faces each displayed a single sentence:

The poster with my self-portrait showed the text Stop Telling Women to Smile. I put that poster in Brooklyn one night, and the very next day on Tumblr I came across a photo that someone had taken of it. By the end of the day, the photo had thousands of likes and reposts. Soon after, I pasted two posters on a corner in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. A reporter from NPR lived on that block. He sent photos of the work to his friends at other media outlets, and pretty quickly, a reporter from the New York Times contacted me to discuss the work. The NPR reporter covered the project by coming out with me one night while I put up the work. As soon as I put up the first piece, a cop car stopped and police officers caught me. It was great footage for the reporter, who recorded the entire interaction. The police officer let me go. In New York, the police are usually pretty stern on vandalism. Ive known artists who have been arrested for wheat-pasting. Its always alarming, any time that Im confronted by the police, whether I am in the wrong or not. As a Black woman, it is always a charged interaction. This night, I told the officer I would take the work down, that it wasnt permanent. He let me go. From there, the media coverage continued and the project grew a large following online.