By: LEENA KHAN
Staff Writer
In this video, a woman walks the streets of Manhattan wearing street clothes and then wearing a hijab. When she is walking the streets in jeans, a shirt, and cardigan men are looking back to stare at her as she walks past and are catcalling her in an attempt to get her attention. Men walking past her get unnecessarily close to her and are harassing her. A driver even honks at her as she walks on a crosswalk. One man even starts walking along with her and tries to hit on her and when she shows no interest he continues to follow her. Despite how many times she says she is not interested he proceeds to harass her and follow her for a few blocks. When she is in the hijab, she is still looked at a little bit, but not at the level she was wearing casual dress. Men are not doing a double take as she walks past and she is not receiving any form of harassment like in the first part of the video. She is left alone and no one talks to her. She was only treated like a human when she was wearing a hijab and was left alone and at peace. In the first casual dress outfit, she was being harassed and stalked while simply walking in Manhattan. It was sad to watch because women should be left alone regardless of what they are wearing and should feel safe walking around without being harassed. In the video, it is clear that in street clothes the woman felt uncomfortable and not respected in the way she felt wearing a hijab. After watching the video I realized the extent of what women experience when wearing regular street clothes and simply walking around when this is a norm. It made me realize how many women experience harassment daily doing mundane activities just because of what they are wearing. The most disturbing scene was when she was wearing street clothes and there was a man that started stalking her, and they had to intervene in the video because of how dangerous it was. Overall, this video was very eye-opening and scary to see the realities that women experience daily.