A Walk on the Woman’s Side

On the days that I work from home I like to take advantage of the flexibility of the remote work schedule and exercise on my lunch breaks. In an hour I can easily get in my workout, grab something to eat afterwards, and actually eat while I get back to work. It doesn’t matter how sweaty or smelly the situation gets, so long as I can make myself look somewhat presentable (at least from the shoulders up) for my afternoon Zoom meetings.

Typically my workouts are confined to my living room/craft room/gym, where I can struggle, sweat, and swear in the privacy of my own home. But when the weather turns lovely and not too hot I like to go for walks for my exercise. Lunchtime is perfect because traffic isn’t too bad and the kids are still confined to the middle school I pass on my route - because yes, even at the age of thirty-six, I still fear the cutting words and judgement of the pre-teen human.

The part of South Orange where I reside is at the bottom of a huge ridge. Starting from my street and moving west, each parallel street sits on another level of the ridge so there are massive inclines in between. The parallel streets themselves are pretty level, so you can walk along them rather easily by comparison to the hills you climb to reach them.

The original route that I typically took included one baby hill and one massive hill. This massive hill runs for about three tenths of a mile and is quite enough to get my heart questioning its purpose in life. Recently, though, I have been looking to challenge myself a little more and decided to try adding a second massive hill to my walking route. This I did last week and found that by the time I reached the top of the second hill, by some miracle I was still alive, but only just. At the top of the hill I struggled for breath and questioned all of my life choices. My heart rate was reading in the 180s on the Fitbit, something I had yet to achieve in any other cardio workout, and it was a sensation I was eager to be rid of.

The graph doesn’t indicate that my heart rate went as high as it did, but I swear I saw it at 184. Unless I was hallucinating, which is entirely possible.

I walked along the level street at the top of the ridge and was able to catch my breath. After a few blocks of flat surface I turned to make my way back down the hill towards home. I was a mess. My clothing was disheveled, my fingers swollen like big sausage links, and the Iowa State Fair baseball cap that I reserve for walking was drenched in sweat, a fact clearly visible by the sweat lines on the white fabric of the cap. I pure wanted to die. I felt disgusting and just wanted to get home to clean up and start to feel human again.

This is when, as I approached the cross walk at the bottom of the ridge, a car came along the cross street. The man behind the wheel had his window rolled halfway down. He looked up the hill at me and tapped on his horn to get my attention. I looked him right in the eye just in time to see him blow me a kiss as he drove past.

I laughed. I didn’t know how else to react.

Once I saw a video a woman recorded of herself walking around New York City. She recorded a whole day and edited together all the clips of the times she received catcalls or other unwanted attention from men. It happened a lot to this woman. Her point in making the video as I understood it was to show what it is like to exist as a woman in public; to demonstrate how people, particularly men, feel more than welcome to comment on her body publicly and without her permission.

While I am a woman and in possession of a body, I’ve never been catcalled. For the most part I don’t get noticed, I get ignored. When I have had strangers comment on my body it hasn’t been for positive reasons. Once an old guy in Shop Rite told me, “honey, you need to lose some weight,” so, you know, that was nice. Another time a customer at the café where I worked told me I had beautiful dark blue eyes and that must mean that I was of German descent. I am part German, but my eyes are actually hazel and he was only interested in my heritage because of his belief in German supremacy. He must have thought I looked to be of good breeding stock. Quite the compliment.

In many ways it’s nice to be ignored. I don’t have to get myself out of conversations with possibly creepy guys who are obviously only talking to me because of their opinion of my body. I don’t have to figure out how to respond to people telling me I’m gorgeous, as if that is a relevant conversation starter. It’s not entirely bad to not have to deal with this aspect of womanhood. But my lack of experience with it all is what left me so confused when that guy blew me a kiss.

As I said my first reaction was to laugh. It seemed so ridiculous to me. What was this guy blowing a kiss at? Maybe bright red and sweaty faces really do it for him. Or was he attracted to the puddle of underboob sweat clearly visible on my shirt? Incapable as I am of finding positive qualities about myself physically, I was confounded by what inspired his actions.

But then I reasoned with myself and thought about the men I’ve known who have been attracted to me. It has happened and is possible that someone might find me attractive even if I cannot understand why. Just because I’m super rude to myself doesn’t indicate that everyone else on the planet is going to be as mean-spirited as my own inner voice. Maybe that guy was one of the select few who like what it is I’m dragging around.

And here is where I must admit that I felt grateful for and complimented by this random man blowing me a kiss. For once I wasn’t being ignored, but in a good way.

While I felt good for a moment, it was immediately followed by confusion. First was, “does that count as a catcall? He didn’t make any noise…”. At which point I remembered that video of the woman minding her own business while random men examined and commented on her body. Then I felt immediately ashamed, questioning whether I was properly holding my own as a woman if I didn’t feel violated by this stranger’s behavior. Shouldn’t I have felt outraged at not being able to go for a simple walk around town without being confronted by someone else’s opinion of my physical appearance?

I wanted to go for a walk to get some cardio, not to have an existential crisis as a woman.

What it comes down to is this: I really only want one man to think I’m beautiful. I’d like him to think this of me even in the moments when I’ve just rolled out of bed with my hair a mess and a spot of drool dried in the corner of my mouth. (If I’m honest I’d really like him to notice and compliment my eyes, which I feel are my best feature.) From this man I would gladly listen to opinions on how I look and I will tell him so whenever I manage to locate him.

It’s always nice to hear a compliment from someone close to you, be it family or friend, but strangers need not share their opinions. It does not matter what they think, whether positive or negative. Women do not exist to be looked at and judged. (Neither do men, for that matter, but this isn’t about them.) And while it is natural to look at a person and form an opinion of their appearance, it is not appropriate to loudly express your opinion in public.

So, thank you, random man, for the compliment (I think it was a compliment?) of the air kiss. But maybe not another time.