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Stop Telling
Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We're
Taking Back Our Power
by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
c.2020, Seal Press
$28.00 / $35.00 Canada
226 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
Heeeeey, look over here!
You look fine
today, Mama, Sugar, Honey, Baby, fill-in-the-blank with
names you're called by men you don't know. Just think,
Sweetie, Pretty, you were minding your business before this
monkey business started. And just know, by reading
Stop Telling Women to Smile by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh,
that others deal with it, too. |
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Like many women, Tatyana
Fazlalizadeh spent her teen years in public "not wanting to
be seen." Catcalls, creepy comments, unwanted compliments
about her young body followed her from street to sidewalk,
coming from men who made her feel afraid, ashamed, and
definitely harassed. The "sheer quantity" of it struck her
as she got older and in 2012, Fazlalaizadeh, a street
artist, started a movement she calls Stop Telling Women to
Smile.
As part of her work, she
invites women to her studio to tell their stories as she
sketches their portraits. Some of her results are in this
book – and they're powerful.
The most common response
to street harassment, she says, is anxiety, a lingering
dread of what could happen – physical violence, stalking,
emotional terror – whether one interacts with a harasser or
not. For many women, harassment becomes a part of their
daily lives.
Says Fazlalizadeh, men who
engage androgynous women in unwanted ways "are particularly
likely to harass masculine women" out of a false sense of
their own masculinity; they're also likely to harass trans
women because they feel "tricked" by a trans body. Women of
color receive "markedly different" harassment from white men
than from men of their own races. Pregnant women receive
unwelcome touches, as though they're good-luck charms; and
Muslim women are verbally attacked for their clothing.
And who can women "go to
for protection" if the harasser is a police officer?
What can be done?
Fazlalizadeh says that she
sees hope for today's children, who are raised learning not
to harass – but beyond that, the solution "is a large
question that can have many answers."
Give yourself a minute to
skim through Stop Telling Women to Smile, and it may
seem like the book is little more than same-but-different
which, after awhile, is too homogeneous and
overgeneralizing. Dig a little deeper, though, and this book
opens like a flower with pages of emotion, outrageous tales,
anger, unwarranted shame, and a chapter for feminist men
that could spell welcome change.
Dig a little deeper,
though, and you might shudder.
Author Tatyana
Fazlalizadeh makes this book feel like a raw gallery
performance, and it shouts with power but not a lot of
caution. Some of the "What Women Want to Say to Street
Harassers" sidebars come off as advice, and safety isn't
stressed nearly enough there. There's strength in
Fazlalizadeh's words and they're stand-up-and-scream
inspiring, but they just need a hair more prudence.
And yet: this is an
invaluable book for any women's group, it's a great
launching point for conversations with teens of any gender,
and parents will absolutely want to read it. For that, for
them, Stop Telling Women to Smile is worth a
look-over.
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