"Hey, you’re asking for it dressed like that." "Be polite you bitch." "Just trying to make you smile."
For women, it can be difficult to walk down the street without hearing catcalls like these.
Tess Paras, a writer and actress based in Los Angeles, wanted to highlight the reality that women can be taunted nearly everywhere they go. In her video "What If Catcalls Were Cheeseburgers," Paras can't do anything -- walk, drive, work, drink or eat -- without some guy throwing a cheeseburger at her, often accompanied by a sexual innuendo like "Hey, eat my cheeseburger!" or "You know you like it rare."
"Hey, you're asking for it dressed like that!"
The cheeseburger-catcall analogy is one Paras said she heard discussed among "feminist activists, friends, and [in] conversations I've had with others about street harassment." As a comedy writer, she was inspired to put her own "comedic spin" on an experience shared by women everywhere.
Paras told HuffPost that she "thought the visual of getting physically bombarded by cheeseburgers and extending the analogy with a bunch of burger jokes was a funny way to get that across."
"We heard you. We're vegetarians."
One of the complexities Paras wanted to convey in her video is the way a catcall "can range...from a genuine compliment, to a nuisance, to threatening and unsafe," she told HuffPost. "There's that question we have to answer in milliseconds: If I'm not nice to this catcalling guy, does that mean I'm putting myself in physical danger?"
Though she brings comedy to catcalling, the issues Paras raises are real. "We can be interrupted and reminded of ourselves as sexual objects wherever we go, when the male experience doesn't include that reminder," Paras said. "I just hope that men think twice after watching the video and I hope everyone can have a laugh at it."
Watch the full video above, and find the uncensored version here.
Related
Before You Go
