BREAKING: TIMES SQUARE IS STILL TIMES SQUARE. I Posed in a Bikini in Times Square. I Was Expecting Comments from Haters, But What I Actually Heard Was Way More Disheartening.
Standing in the middle of Times Square, it wasn’t super hot, but the pressure of what I was about to do was making me sweat. My fingers slipped against the fabric of my maxi skirt as I fumbled with the tightly-knotted bow. My outfit fell away, revealing my pink bikini beneath it. I heard hollers from strangers, but their words blurred into an indecipherable mess as I tried, unsuccessfully, to remain calm. A sliver of sun peeked out from behind the skyscrapers, reminding me we were about to lose the light. No more time for nerves — it was now or never.
“Let’s do this,” I said out loud. My clothes dropped all the way to the ground, and the voices around me became clear.
“I want to suck on them tasty toes.”
“Hey baby, let me butter them biscuits for you.”
I looked up to see three men with camera phones filming me. Our eyes met, and one uttered, “Twerk for the camera baby, show them how that ass clap.”
Tears began to well up. I was prepared to be pointed at, shamed, and called fat. I didn’t expect to be fetishized.
* * * * * * * *
My tears turned to anger, and the words began to fly out of my mouth: “It doesn’t make it OK. You’re disgusting. Please stop. Please just stop…” The man justified his response by saying that plus women “don’t know they’re f*ckable.” Let me be very clear here, as I stated in the caption for the photo I later posted to Instagram: A plus-size woman’s worth, or any one woman’s worth for that matter, is not contingent on someone wanting to have sex with them. You don’t exist to pleasure someone else … you exist to change the world.
I think the world is all the better for this vitally important scientific experiment. On the other hand, “It’s almost as if it was a dumb stunt and she would have been angry regardless of the reaction, whether it was catcalls, criticism, or getting ignored,” Reason’s Robby Soave tweets.
And Iowahawk’s Rule, which he most recently tweeted on Sunday after FIFA asked its networks’ cameramen to stop zooming in on pretty girls in the stands during matches, remains solid: “Please remember: (1) scantily clad conventionally attractive women = demeaning and sexist; (2) scantily clad morbidly obese women = stunning and brave.”