It seems to be a new trend to secretly film yourself walking down the street, sharing the results online to show off exactly what happened to you in a specific time frame and country. Now we've got the latest addition - a woman spending 10 hours walking the streets of New York City and being asked for her number, followed and told to 'smile more'.
Providing uncomfortable viewing at times - especially at a point where one male walks directly alongside the woman without speaking for a number of minutes - there are points added into this 'collection of moments of harrassment' that personally I do not believe fall into the realms of 'harassment'.
Are we now in a world where a man who asks a woman if he can give her his number is classed as harassment? Where if you simply state 'Wow' whilst looking at a member of the opposite sex, you're being offensive? As men, we are told to harnass the moment, introduce yourself to people you find attractive and make the first move so as not to miss out on an opportunity. Is that a piece of advice we're now to ignore?
Speaking to women about this particular video, they came back to me with differing opinions. Whilst one was with me and agreed that there's no real threat bar one or two cases in the video, another believes that despite it being "flattering in a perverse sense", it's absolutely "the worst way to chat someone up if they are serious about wanting more."
They also mentioned that because some of the walking round the city takes place at night, the vulnerability of being in a big city in the dark on your own would make these sorts of comments more worrying - something I completely agree with.
I am not for a minute saying that everything that goes on in this video would make a woman feel attractive, brilliant and beautiful. As a woman you have the right to talk to and to ignore anybody you'd like, but if you do ignore someone who simply tells you to 'have a nice day', you can come across as rude. It's not hard to smile and say 'thank you', or 'you too'.
You do not know each individual's intentions. You could let the love of your life pass by if you're intentionally ignoring everybody who speaks to you, but there's always the risk that if you do engage, you're stuck in a conversation with a lunatic and making it ten times harder for yourself to shut down the exchange.
The video ends with the note that these were just some of over 100 cases of unwanted attention being thrown at the video's star within the 10 hours. If some of these were considered the worst and most shocking, the level of those that weren't included were supposedly very minor.
Whilst the comments on this particular video prove to show that there's a lot more than harassment we need to still tackle (racism, sexism etc.), there are views from every angle in relation to 'street harassment', and these particular examples. What is clear is that the line between being friendly and being a 'harasser' is extremely blurred.