Nina In New York: Mom-Callers Make Catcallers Look Pretty Okay
A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak
Recently, a girlfriend was complaining to me about a rampant catcalling problem in her area. Men say insane things to her and her friends; frighteningly, one of them even followed her to a bus stop. She's beginning to lose it, she says. She wants to carry around a taser and dreams of citizen-arresting them all and throwing their misogynist butts into jail.
I was thinking about this the other day as I strolled through my neighborhood. It's been under heavy construction for months, filled with the workers who are the stereotypical perpetrators of these sorts of verbal assaults my friend finds so offensive.
As always, I walked through the gauntlet of backhoes and bulldozers and jackhammers and traffic directors completely unscathed. I get it, I get it. I know I look pretty alright. But I choose to walk around without makeup, looking tired and disheveled, wearing old sneakers and Target leggings, pushing a toddler around. I'm not exactly cat(calling)-nip. It's a relief to know I can walk around enjoying the utter anonymity -- nay, invisibility -- that comes with being a stay-at-home mom. I kept walking, enjoying the fall day. The wind picked up a bit, though it was sunny. I hugged my jacket around me and looked down at my daughter in her stroller, who was happily buttoned into her coat and reading a book. An old man passed by us, stopped, turned and began yelling out to me.
"Yo, baby!" he shouted. Wait, that wasn't it. "You baby! You baby! She cold! Cold baby!" He was gesturing wildly around his head in a desperate attempt to signify to me that she ought to be wearing a hat.
"She's fine," I said.
"Baby! Cold! You baby cold! Cold! COLD!" he persisted, perhaps concerned I hadn't understood him and that was why I wasn't responding to his frenzied nagging. This guy could barely speak English, but he managed to scrape together the vocabulary to warn me of my dangerously bad parenting.
"She's fine," I repeated. I turned and kept walking, rolling my eyes and muttering to myself. This was hardly the first time a stranger had offered me or one of my friends unsolicited, unnecessary criticism regarding our children. They are often elderly, mostly well-intentioned, and thoroughly infuriating. If they were running around town like aged superheroes, saving babies from impending doom, that might be one thing. But they aren't. All they're doing is vocally disagreeing with our choices.
Don't they know that unwelcome parenting advice belongs to the grandparents? We don't need any more of this stuff. Trust me.
As I stomped and stormed along, I passed another group of men. They smiled; one winked. And it dawned on me: barring those truly scary moments like the one my aforementioned friend experienced, I would nearly always prefer to be catcalled than mom-called.
A man who calls out to a woman to comment on her appearance is crass and disrespectful, to be sure. But the interaction is brief, it's occasionally complementary, it's often more harmless than demeaning, and it's generally not personal. Not to say you don't look good, sweet cheeks, but they pretty much say that to all the girls.
Mom-callers, on the other hand, never have anything positive to say. And it is deeply personal. "You, there, lady! You, specifically, are a negligent mother. Not only do you not know how properly to keep your child clothed/fed/out of harm's way, but you are so perilously close to the edge of disaster that I can't possibly restrain myself from chastising you on a noisy street/crowded store/hectic playground. Be a better person! You are failing obviously and publicly!" If that isn't belittling, I don't know what is.
Call me crazy, or starved for attention, or degraded, or a bad feminist or whatever you'd like, but I don't care. I'd happily take a "hey, baby" over a "hey, your poor baby." Any day of the week.
I suppose there's always the third option of no one heckling anyone they don't know on the sidewalk. Ha ha ha.
Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!
