Passersby near the Charter Oak Cultural Center may have noticed some new literature posted around the neighborhood on their commutes within Hartford this week. Without context, the pieces appear to be nothing more than isolated and vague quotes, commanding the reader to show respect to an unknown author for an unknown reason, but they are really part of a larger, nationwide movement to bring awareness to what is more commonly becoming known as street harassment.
Street harassment – the unwelcome honking, cat-calls, or other unwanted advances that women, and even men, experience when walking from point A to point B – is one form of harassment that society has begun to accept as an unavoidable fact of life. If we haven’t been on the receiving or giving end, we have at least witnessed it first-hand or know someone who has experienced its unsettling effect. Speaking out against it is viewed as futile, and those outspoken few who do respond could be inviting more unwelcome advances, often times more aggressive and dangerous.
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, a New York-based artist and freelance illustrator originally from Oklahoma, seeks to address this gender-based form of street harassment in her traveling series, “Stop Telling Women to Smile.” The project, initiated in Brooklyn, NY in 2012, created much-needed momentum, inspiring Tatyana to take her work on tour. According to her website, it “consists of a series of portraits of women – women who I have sat [and] talked with about their experiences with harassment. The portraits are designed into posters, including text that is inspired by the subject’s experiences. And then I wheat paste.”
Tatyana’s most recent tour stop was here in Hartford, where a small group of women, representing three or four generations from all walks of socio and economic classes, joined Tatyana to share their experiences with and reactions to street harassment.
The women shared a similar sense of frustration. Some felt angrier at not being able to confront harassers directly while others expressed disappointment at having to accept street harassment as a status quo. It not only impacted their own self-identity as women but also how they raised their daughters. An older participant lamented the fact that with street harassment, “They’re setting the terms … You find yourself having to respond to something you didn’t initiate … You’re taught not to respond, and it chips away at you for years.”
The discussion enabled workshop participants to create their own responses to their harassers. Tatyana photographed each woman holding her response, and plans to use those photographs and the women’s experiences as inspiration to continue expanding the project, putting a caption to real women’s portraits and displaying the pieces on the streets where harassment happens. Tatyana aims to post the final portraits in the areas where participants live or where they experience street harassment, but she also hopes to “spread these posters out and cover a lot of ground.”
To see Tatyana’s work, visit her website, or watch a brief video on the “Stop Telling Women to Smile” project website.