Please enjoy my response to the walks I took in Paris where harassment has been become a normal activity for the society of the city of lights.
Let me add before this comes off as an entirely hateful post: Paris, j'adore!
Le petit part un:
Paris at any hour has been so
highly romanticized that any tourist believes he or she will walk out into the
grand boulevards and nothing can touch them. In Paris, however, the city of
light does go dark, the bars close early, and suddenly the taxis turn on their
red lights. What must the tourist do when the metro closes and the cold musty
air begins to penetrate your skin? On va
en pied, of course.
I must admit my one weakness as a traveler and explorer: I
am a woman. Traversing a city alone at night defiantly as a woman makes me an
uncommon species: une femme contre la
monde. I tell myself, I am a woman when I am dragging my luggage through a
busy metro station, and I am a woman when I am standing alone under the glossy
glow of the street lamps. However, my woman-ness surprises even me when I yell
back at the cocky men at the Saint Lazare train station, because it would be
too shameful to say nothing. “What were you thinking?” my elders say, “Walking
around in Paris at night by yourself!” What they do not know is this is how a
woman earns her stripes. Why, in the jungle does not the lioness hunt? We
lionesses are not given enough credit. As I walk away triumphant from yet
another verbal battle, I feel like a Roman gladiator. As I succeed in walking
alone in Paris at night I tell myself, I made it out of the wolf’s den
unscathed. Because my true strength is being a woman.
Le part deux:
I sat
cautiously on the metro. From the green line at Saint Lazare I began avoiding
interaction by staring at the boxes of aqua fluorescent lights and crossing my
ankles cagily as I waited to switch trains to the blue line. I walked in
between the trains with the knowledge of those uncomfortable eyes on me. Why
does a man think because you are walking you must be strutting for him? But we,
the weaker chromosome, are told a woman must not turn back and stare, a woman
must watch what she wears, a woman cannot handle herself alone. I marched
determinedly towards the green line with my eyes glued to the wall. My heart
dives as I view the advertisements objectifying women and perpetuating sexism.
I blamed it on the normalization of sexism in Europe until I ran into the ads
for American movies that inculcate the tasteless sensibilities of sex from my
own country. Suddenly, I locked eyes with a man in a shiny leather jacket, he
thrusted his hips at me and I felt it like a punch to my throat. I wanted to
look away from this unpredictable man but I held my gaze as if it did not
bother me. He flicked the back of his hand as if to say, “You’re not worth it,
anyway.” Out of breath, I thought to myself, how could I stare back into those
awful dark eyes?
Once I
arrived at Pigalle I became enthusiastic about the night ahead of me when I
heard the distant vibrations of the bars. There were dozens of people around
Pigalle ready to fall into the dark night, ready to escape into another reality
of alcohol, music, and anonymity. Les
gens de la nuit rushed into every dark avenue like water being squeezed
from a rag. I wanted to throw my body into this deluge, yet I remembered I
ought to be careful. “I am not going to wear anything glamorous,” I told myself
before I went out that night, but as I looked around Pigalle and at the rest of
the fashionably dressed women I wondered why. Was I hiding under my loose fitting
jeans and oversized sweater? Was “glamorous” just another internalized
euphemism for “slutty?” My androgynous clothes purposefully served to make a
confusion of and protest against “girly” fashion. Sure, it was probably not
going to work and men were still going to continue to bother me. However, I
preferred to think that my outward expression of rebellion would at least warn
them of my demeanor.
My
enthusiasm drifted down the avenue ahead of me like warm rays of the sun, and I
was left underneath a dissonant grey sky shivering with chills of hesitation. I
could not turn back now. I forcefully pulled down my sweater and checked that
no one had seen me appear nervous.
At the
crosswalk I was untrusting of the pushy cars and rogue motorcycles. I watched
as the Parisian women walked coolly across the avenues, in four-inch stilettos
no less, and I gazed in amazement as the last steps they took were just inches
away from the oncoming traffic. And I knew at that moment that we were
different types of women. They know how to handle this environment and I, on
the other hand, was just beginning to be indoctrinated.
Since
in France sexual harassment on the street is not a crime, French women have
shown me how they “handle” these instances. “I just ignore them,” one intelligent
French woman told me. When I questioned why she did not say anything back she
replied, “They are not going to act on it, but it does make the city feel
unsafe at night.” I was very sad for this French woman because she was allowing
these men the right to harass her. The fear she felt was always going to be
with her at night, perhaps even in her home.
The
other resolution I preferred was what I like to call Fallopian, or assertive.
Let that sink in. This use of the female body in a positive way may make one
queasy because society has constructed an ideology of femininity to represent
weak character, i.e. “Don’t be a pussy,” or “You throw like a girl.” If society
allows the use of men’s testicles to represent boldness and masculine power,
i.e. “ballsy,” then why should the female anatomy be too messy of a subject to
transform into a point of empowerment? So, Fallopian it is.
My
Fallopian friend, whom I was meeting at the bar called Le Sans Souci, had once said, “I did not know myself until I came to
Paris.” I remembered these words as I tried to find the bar on my own. She had
given me perfect directions, but being a tourist made me instantly question my
intuition, sweat profusely at the thought of stumbling into a “bad
neighborhood,” and finally, every street sign mockingly turned into
hieroglyphics. I did not want to pause for long on the corner at Pigalle, so I
dashed hopelessly to the nearest cardinal direction that felt right. She had
explained to me plainly, “It’s at the bottom of the hill, you can’t miss it!”
Unfortunately the streets all looked hilly to my Oklahoman eyes that were so
used to the plains and big sky. “Excusez-moi,”
I asked a young well-dressed mec in
frightened French, “est-ce que vous
connaissez le bar Le Sans Souci?” He took his time to respond, laying an
icy damp hand that had just held his beer on the back of my neck, he pointed to
the next street, the one my intuition was leaning towards before I
second-guessed myself. “Il est la-bas,
mademoiselle” he languorously said, with his tongue drawing out “elle”. I did not know whether to thank
him or slap him, however I tried to squeeze in both gestures when I flicked
away his arm and turned my back to him before “Merci” was begrudgingly pushed out of my lips.
I went la-bas and ecstatically skipped down the
hill when I saw the neon red cursive letters of the bar. I found my petite 5’3,
fashionable and bright Fallopian amie sitting
at an European style table with a beer ready for me. I told her of how I
thought of her words while trudging through the rustic landscape of French
sexism. “When I came to Paris from a small ville
near Bordeaux,” she said reminiscently, “I was shy and men would do awful
things right in the streets.” Sitting with strange men on either side of us,
she spoke in stoic French because they were trying to edge their way into our
conversation. “Finally, when a man was harassing me,” she said loudly, “making
sick gestures, and yelling behind me, I had the nerve to turn around and say ‘I
despise you!’ You bet he stopped in his tracks!”
I knew
who I wanted to be at that moment. I would rather dress as I am than reject my
body by hiding its beauty. I would rather cause a scene than allow a harassment
to humiliate me. I would rather vocalize my disgust with the constructs of my
society than allow anyone the right over my body.
Running
back to the metro before the last train left, I did not look left or right
crossing the busy street. I commanded my path across and did not stop until I
reached the other side.
I heard
someone honk, another person yelled, and it made me feel alive.
Bien à tu!
Marilyse Figueroa-Valdez
