Why’s everybody always pickin’ on Shoshana Roberts?
For a few very obvious reasons: She is a shapely young woman. Men are jerks. And more than that, we simply pick on anyone who is different. It happens all of the time and it always will.
Periodically, attempts will be made, like the one that Roberts participated in recently, that try to let us know what we already know. Namely, that if you walk around Manhattan in a shirt that is one size too small, and pants that are tight, you are going to get catcalls.
If you watch Roberts’ video, you might notice she didn’t walk through the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the New York Public Library. She was right down there in the trenches.
I think Roberts and her cameraman-boyfriend wasted their dime. They filmed for 10 hours and the footage was edited to a two-minute public service announcement. I’ll bet not one of the men who appeared in the video have seen it. Or if they have, that they care about the implications.
I am sorry Roberts experiences daily what she experienced in the video. But I am far more concerned about individuals who are picked on because they are disfigured, underweight, overweight, gay, or physically limited in any way.
And that happens all of the time as well. As soon as we have a frame of reference, as soon as we get an assumption about what normal looks like, anyone who doesn’t fit in gets picked on and bullied.
Last month a man at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport was assaulted by another man. It is presumed that he was assaulted because he was wearing a pink shirt.
You can’t educate someone who doesn’t want to be educated and wants to remain in the dark about civility.
I haven’t checked to see if Roberts is scheduled for talk shows, and I won’t. I could write the script. There will be a lot of serious looks and furrowed brows.
Many women seek attention, and men are thrown curveballs because of it. Men can’t figure out which ones seek attention, and which ones simply want to be left alone.
My friend Ruth Todd was an artist, and she was a very good one. She thought she was a beautiful woman, and she was. But when she could no longer paint, in her 80s and 90s, she carried her resume with her, to show cab drivers, doctors and nurses that she had been someone once. And when she could no longer attract attention because of her beauty, she was depressed.
One day in a grocery store, she said to me, “I am invisible.”
Some day Roberts will be invisible too, and she will be able to walk anywhere and not get any attention. Maybe that will be the time to film a sequel to her video.
I saw a man at Los Angeles International Airport who I will never forget. He was dressed quite nicely and had searching eyes. I think his eyes were searching for a small amount of compassion. Half of his face was covered with large, permanent, purple tumors.
Our concerns are relative. Hundreds of young women are hostages of the Islamic State and they are routinely raped and tortured. Some are exposed in markets in Iraq, wearing price tags.
Being subjected to chauvinistic street comments isn’t so bad after all, is it, Shoshana?
Craig Marshall Smith (craigmarshallsmith@comcast.net) of Highlands Ranch is a retired emeritus professor of art and an abstract expressionist painter.
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