A 20-year-old student from Amsterdam has come up with a unique project to highlight the way men harass women on the streets across the world.
Noa Jansma has created an Instagram page titled Dear Catcallers, where she takes a selfie with each of her harassers and documents the incident on her page. The month-old project has garnered 45,000 followers in a short period of time.
What’s interesting is that Jansma actually approaches the men to have their picture taken with her in the selfie. There’s a theme to the pictures too - we see Jansma, straight-faced, and grinning men, oblivious to the fact that they’ve made her feel uncomfortable. The first man she asked replied “with enthusiasm,” Jansma told Het Parool, which was then reported by UK’s The Independent.
“This Instagram has the aim to create awareness about the objectification of women in daily life,” she wrote at the end of August.
A post shared by dearcatcallers (@dearcatcallers) on
“Since many people still don’t know how often and in whatever context ‘catcalling’ happens, I’ll be showing my catcallers within the period of one month.”
In a selfie, “both the objectification and the object are assembled in one composition. Myself, as the object, standing in front of the catcallers represents the reversed power ratio which is caused by this project.”
Jansma had had the idea in her head for a while, but after two men harassed her on a train, she decided to take action.
A post shared by dearcatcallers (@dearcatcallers) on
Over the course of the month, only one man asked her why she wanted to take a selfie, which says it all really.
“They’re not at all suspicious because they find what they do completely normal,” Jansma said.
And there were actually more incidences of street harassment than the Instagram account suggests - on some occasions, Jansma didn’t feel safe enough to ask for a selfie or the man had already got away.
Having finished her month-long project, Jansma wants to pass on the Instagram account to other girls around the world.
With sexual harassment and objectifying of women in India an issue that needs serious penalties, we wonder how such a project would work in various parts of the country.
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