In my high school there is a patio area where everyone hangs out in between classes and during lunch. The school is small, so you can see everyone from the benches at the end of the patio. That is where the most popular boys in the school used to sit. Every day, as each girl passed, these boys stared at her and rated her different body parts from one to ten. The girls dreaded walking out of the lunchroom. This practice had been going on for years and I'm pretty sure that's why our school had one of the highest eating disorder rates in the state.
I was friendly with these boys. I knew them all, and actually I was always glad about that because even though they still rated me, at least they never publicly humiliated me by yelling out the numbers. Until one day.
"Six."
"What? No way. That's Rachel. Eight."
"Ha! Seven for the bottom, five and a half for the top."
I felt so degraded and worthless I spent the rest of the lunch period hiding in the bathroom.
But something else happened that day, too. The girls at my school, girls who were usually so competitive with and cruel to one another, started talking. It began in the bathroom, when I rallied us together by suggesting we take action against these boys.
The next day at lunch a bunch of us girls got to the "boys' bench" before they did. We sat and waited until they approached, and when they did, we called out their ratings as they walked by. We had it all planned out: When they came up to us to talk, we lifted their shirts and grabbed at them just the way they did to us every day. Then we handed each a letter I'd written and gotten one hundred and fifty-eight girls to sign. It said they needed to stop their behavior right away and that we were not going to stand for it any more.
It sounds amazing, but from then on it all stopped. Instead of taking their intimidating places on the bench, the boys mingled in the lunchroom. If any of the guys made any angry or sexual comments toward us about what we had done, they were immediately silenced by their friends.
It feels great knowing I did something good for girls, especially something that will help those who have yet to enter the frightening halls of high school.
This story was first published in the book THAT TAKES OVARIES!: BOLD FEMALES AND THEIR BRAZEN ACTS (Random House/Three Rivers Press). That Takes Ovaries is a book, a play for the stage, an open mike movement and an organizing tool for women and girls' empowerment. Find out how to lead your own That Takes Ovaries open mike by visiting www.ThatTakesOvaries.org or e-mailing Rivka at Rivka@ThatTakesOvaries.org.
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