GLANCING BLOWS....

by Jane Freeman, writing for Melbourne's AGE's Sunday Life, September 28th '97.

I'm heading towards the wolf-whistle watershed, that point in life where men are going to stop leering at me automatically just because I happen to be female. I guess I should say right now that I have, by no means, been the most sexually harassed of women. Let's just say I've never been a candidate to host Sex/Life (apart from anything, I wear spectacles, which seems to be the equivalent of a cold shower to the male psyche). But like any young woman, I have had to deal with my share of the fliration of strangers and sexual innuendo on the street. Nothing too outrageous, certainly nothing that has made my life a misery. I've never felt so incensed that I wanted to take pot shots at men on building sites (well, not unless they were wearing those jeans that droop down so repulsively over their buttocks). But there has certainly been enough casual male attention from passing strangers to make it a factor in my life. However now, as I sail majestically toward the mid-point of the 3os - OK, kicking and screaming and smothered in alpha hydroxy acids - I can see the days of the wolf-whistle are going to come to an end. Like menopause, passing the wolf-whistle watershed seems like it will bring some fabulous attractions. I don't think men realise that women have to put time and energy into dealing with this stuff. Whether you are nice and smiley about it, like your mum taught you, or whether you snarl like a demented hyena while shouting lesbian separatist slogans, it still takes a megabyte of your energy. It can be a nuisance to have to put up with the flirtatious guy taking the money at the car park, when all you really want to do is park your damn car, not discuss your dress sense. And when you take that same car off to the car-wash, you probably just want to wash the bloody thing, not chat about your latest hair cut and whether it makes you look younger. And that, of course, is the low-level friendly stuff. There's a whole other layer of horrible encounters that happen more rarely but, when they do, leave you wanting to go and boil yourself in Domestos for about an hour. You know, the station-wagon full of guys that screech past bawling some observation about the vast size of your bum or the meagre size of your breasts or the general bootlike ugliness of your face. I can see that not having to put any time into responding to this attention, friendly or foul, is going to be like shucking off a pair of pinching high heels. On the other hand, given what a slippery, treacherous devil the human brain appears to be, I am also prepared to discover that becoming invisible is not such a pleasant thing after all. Maybe becoming invisible will rankle sorely and I'll feel that a certain sparkle has gone out of my life. Maybe I will actually miss the compliments and the banter and the offers of sexual congress from the man behind the counter in the pet food shop. Hard to imagine . . all I can see at the moment is that at the other side of the wolf-whistle watershed lies a utopia where preoccupations with appearance and body and attractiveness will be thrown aside, leaving femalekind finally free to dress any way they want, do anything they want and say anything they like. Not to mention getting into car park without out the five-minute fashion assessment at the door.

Please mail any comments and suggestions to: robin_knight@bigfoot.com

Back to ROBIN'S GOLDEN OLDIES

HAVE A LOOK AT SOME OF THE OTHER GREAT ESSAYS WE'VE FEATURED!

A Fridge Too Far by Sharon Gray.

Yearning For Amish by Deborah Foster.

BACK TO MY HOMETOWN.

This page hosted by

---