This piece is a rendition of a post Kimi Goffe wrote for Develle Dish earlier this year in January

“Yow, my girl, mi like how yu body design!”
“Pretty girl, good night.”
“Big bottom gyal, beg yu a dance nuh?”
“Yu shape good, yu know?”

These are just a few of the phrases men have said to me around my hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. Jamaican men are somewhat notorious for their outspoken appreciation of women’s physical features and my experience has only confirmed this. Puberty began rounding me out at the early age of ten and Jamaican men were more than enthusiastic to take notice. The earliest memory I have is of a man in a downtown shopping plaza who asked me, “beg yu a suck offa dem breasts?”…I was 13.

Cat-calling, street harassment, whatever you want to call it, I’ve experienced my fair share of it in Jamaica. And I’m not a special case. Cat-calling is a plague to women everywhere! It’s inappropriate and rude and men should stop doing it.

The thing is, as much as these displays of interest had bothered me, I found myself missing them when I left Jamaica to come to school in the US.  I’m sure it’s partly due to the environments I’ve spent time in, (almost all white, super preppy, rich boarding school in Massachusetts; and now a predominantly white, kind of preppy, rich private university in North Carolina) but this kind of attention has not been expressed since I’ve been here. At least not at nearly the same level as it is in Jamaica….And I admit, I miss it.

This is where things start making less sense. Do I like it when strange men yell inappropriate things at me in public places?  No…but kinda? Do I want random guys to make reference to my “fat pum-pum” while I’m on the road?  No…but yes? Cat-calls force me to negotiate two differing sets of feelings:

1. my desire to walk freely without being bothered by vulgar comments
2. my desire for men to find me physically attractive.

I’m not particularly interested in dating a toothless old man on a Kingston street corner who can still manage to say (sans teeth), “Yu look nice, yu know baby.” So, I don’t care if he finds me attractive. But the type of men I want to find me attractive either:

a) aren’t at Duke
b) are at Duke but aren’t letting me know I’m attractive
c) don’t find me attractive.

I don’t like any of these options. So I’m left missing the toothless old man. Which is ridiculous.

My inner-feminist tells me that I should be grossed out, upset, angry, pissed off, LIVID when men say lewd remarks to me. (Fat pum-pum?!? Really?!)…It is so annoying that cat-calling is a completely gendered experience. Honestly how many men do you know who have received cat-calls? So why should I have to deal with men interrupting my day in a rude and unwanted manner?

They are unwanted, right?

Right?

Am I wrong by appreciating cat-calls? I didn’t realize I appreciated them until I came to America and experienced the sensation of being ignored, going un-noticed by all males, feeling that either I am unattractive (which sucks) or that everyone is blind (which also sucks)

Last semester, a very nice boy who I don’t know very well told me he thought I was beautiful. Nothing came of it, but it was a lovely compliment.  If I could replace cat-calling with nice, appropriate compliments like that one, I would. But if I had to choose between cat-calling and feeling ignored, I say bring on the cat-calls!…Does that make me a bad feminist?