What I would say to catcallers, if I could

My name isn’t Gorgeous. It isn’t Babe. It isn’t Sexy Legs.

Sexy Legs is what did it for me: that was the time I tossed a fuck-off over my shoulder back at the man who’d reduced me to two limbs.

My instinct here is to explain. I was wearing and a near Times Square, dressed all pretty because my boyfriend was visiting me that day. I had a reason, you see, for those bare legs in winter. I have to excuse myself for those legs that I’d been proud of before leaving my dorm room, those legs I wanted to hide after 25 minutes of being outside. But then

I’d have to excuse all the I wear, I suppose, because it doesn’t just happen when I’m trying to look nice:

Going back to the subway station midtown, in and the polo I wear for work: “Girl, you wanna go on a date with an older man tonight?”

Dressed up for a birthday dinner around 80th street, with several friends: a man passing on a bike yells something offensive that I can’t quite catch all of. I hope my friends didn’t notice.

Heading to dance class in a leotard and , my hair in a bun, no makeup: a man standing by the garbage truck smiles and says, “Morning, babe.”

In formal clothes, having just come from seeing the philharmonic, walking to get pizza with a handful of friends: a man swings his grocery bag at me, mumbles, “You’re coming home with me.” He misses and stumbles away.

Wearing I hate and an enormous sweatshirt, painting a door: he doesn’t say anything, but presses up against me, behind me. He grins at my discomfort.

And in my stockings and dress:

“Ooh, gorgeous.” I pretend I didn’t hear. “Hey, sexy legs.” I tell him to fuck off and don’t turn around for his reply—but I hear it anyway as I walk into the store. He tells me it’s my fault for showing that much leg. I’m late to pick up my boyfriend, but I don’t want to leave the store. Eventually I do.

“Hon, you’re looking fine today.” I walk faster—not out of fear, because it’s the middle of the day and it’s crowded, but to distance myself from the attention. I hear him laugh. “Run away,” he yells at my back. “Run away.”

Later I will almost cry at the futility of it. There is no right way for me to exist outside my own room—no way for me to dress and act and be that won’t leave me feeling unsafe and uncomfortable and wrong. I am left with the knowledge that I am sometimes not really a person when I’m in public. I am a thing to be judged, and looked at, and talked at, whistled at, yelled at, laughed at.

If I could respond, I would say: I don’t need your words to feel beautiful. I couldn’t give less of a shit as to what you think about my tits or my legs or my ass, whether you’d fuck me or not. So it’s not a compliment to encroach on my sense of security and comfort, to impose your useless fucking opinion on my life and make me worry that this will be the time a person doesn’t just use their words to make me feel unsafe.

It’s disrespectful. And I’m a person, and not a thing, and I deserve respect.

But I can’t respond, not without engaging further in a situation I already feel uncomfortable in. I’ll drop my head, quicken my pace, hold my phone a little tighter in my hand, walk away until I’m gone.