Noa Jansma, from the Netherlands, is a beautiful young woman — and she gets a lot of unwanted attention every time she steps out onto the street.
Recently a man draped his arm around her shoulders, almost groping her chest, but he isn’t a relative or a friend or a person she actually likes.
He’s a random middle-age person who catcalled her in the street as she walked past, yelling: “Hmmmm. You wanna kiss?”
Jansma, 20, has made a powerful statement about sexual objectification during a month-long experiment on Instagram.
Every time she gets harassed, she walks up to the offender and asks if she can take a selfie, which is then posted to her @dearcatcallers account.
“It’s not a compliment,” she declared.
“By making the selfie, both the objectifier and the object are assembled in one composition. Myself, as the object, standing in front of the catcallers represents the reversed power ratio which is caused by this project.”
Since she began on Aug. 29, she’s posted 24 images of herself with men, listing the words they shouted at her in the caption.
It’s remarkable how many men are happy to smile and pose for her pictures, considering their creepy and downright offensive comments.
She claims a number of them actually followed her for a lengthy period, with one much older man even asking her to get into his car.
Others demanded to know why she wasn’t smiling, and repeatedly called her “baby” or made kissing noises as she passed.
In just over a month, she’s accumulated more than 90,000 followers — the vast majority of whom appear to be women who strongly support her project.
She said it’s quite clear that sexual objectification of women is a “global phenomenon,” and though her project is finished, she plans to continue her account.
“Thank you for all the support and messages,” she wrote in a recent post.
“It has made it clear that catcalling is still a common occurrence that many of us are dealing with.”
