Dear Diary:
Tell me what you think it’s like to be a girl in New York City. To walk down the street and feel the construction workers sexing us up. Looking at our skirts and wondering what color panties we have on.
Sometimes they ask. Did you know that? Sometimes they get in our faces and ask about the thong they can see through our leggings.
Tell me why you would think we like it. When a man gropes us on the subway, do you expect us to thank him?
And don’t say that we should do something about it because, yeah, we should. But we’re 17-year-old girls in New York City. So why not tell him to stop instead of telling us what we should have done?
Being a girl in New York City is like being the sick animal in a pack that gets picked on for parts. And sorry, but if we don’t want the greasy men on the train pushing themselves against us, we’re allowed to turn around and tell them to back off.
And we’re done apologizing for it. So being a girl in New York City isn’t just shopping at Barneys and catching late-night cabs. It’s fighting every day against the men around us who think it’s their prerogative to tell us how they think we look today. Because we are more than what our clothes may say we are. We are deserving of respect. And we will continue to flip off the truck drivers and construction workers and early-morning pervs until they realize that.
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