Free, White and 21

I don't know if you all watch The Muppets as much as I do, but occasionally Animal gets really excited when a beautiful woman walks by and he follows her, yelling, "WOMAN! WOMAN! WOMAN!" This particular form of flirtation seems to be popular with some of the men of NYC.

New York City male, #1

I don't like getting asked out by random men on the street, I don't like the creepy comments ("hey baby, you have cute toes. Are you single or what?"--true occurrence), and I don't like the attention. I suppose that it's flattering, a little bit, but mostly just makes me feel like a commodity. I've never really experienced this before, at least not to this extent, and being a seriously nonconfrontational person, I am pretty bad at deflecting these people. Would that I could launch into a rendition of "My Short Skirt" from the Vagina Monologues, but I can't. Won't.


New York City male, #2
"The only way to bag a classy lady is to give her two tickets to the gun show... and see if she likes the goods." --Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy

However, it's not just the ogling and the comments and the whistles. It's the way men shepherd me onto the bus ahead of them and open doors for me. Now, let's be clear--I think opening doors for people is really nice, and I do it whenever possible. I like people opening doors for me. But, I want it to be reciprocal. By my estimates, 95% of men will not go through a door first if I open it, and I'm not going to force them to go first, because that feels silly. It's all so silly.

For some perspective with my introspective feminism, I'm going to talk a bit about a piece of video art I saw a few weeks ago at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It's by Howardena Pindell and is called Free, White and 21 (1980). I admit to not being that into video art (yeah, I'm a narrowminded art historian, you will all just have to accept it) but this was arresting. I watched it twice. Pindell discusses experiences she'd had--how she was turned down for jobs that she was clearly qualified for because of her race (her BFA from Boston U and her MFA from Yale notwithstanding), for instance. The story I remember the most clearly was when she was a wedding attendant in Maine and people wouldn't shake her hand or dance with her. Then, the minister came over to see if she wanted to dance; while they were dancing he leaned over and said, "I'm in NYC a lot, maybe we should meet up sometime, work out an arrangement" and winked.

Pindell intersperses these remembrances with images of herself as a white woman, with a blond wig and sunglasses. The white Howardena chides the black Howardena for being ungrateful, churlish, and too willing to hold on to old grudges. She ends with the line, "but then...you're not free, white and 21."

Although I am assuredly more free than many, chances are decent that depending on my job, a man will get paid more than me for equal work, as will a taller woman. (I read that in a sociology book my sophomore year of college.) But things are so much better for me because of battles that my parents fought and barriers that my grandmothers broke, that it feels almost ungracious to be frustrated to be getting 76 cents for a male dollar; to be annoyed when a man on the street stares openly at my chest.

Unlike Pindell and countless others over the years, I've never been turned down for a job because I was a woman, unless it was so covert that I didn't pick up on it. The closest I've come to that feeling was in England, when one art history professor I had was intensely condescending to me and the other American woman in the class, usually dismissing what we said offhand. But I think his deal was more with us being Americans, and anyway, after we turned in our first papers he announced to the class that she and I had gotten the highest marks of anyone, and then he was fine with us.

So I don't know what it is like to have people refuse to shake my hand, but watching Free, White and 21 made me feel guilty and a little sick to my stomach. I can acknowledge the generations of privilege I have behind me. And I do. But what do I do about it? That seems to be the question I can't answer.