EX.CA.YUSE.ME « Festina Lente

EX.CA.YUSE.ME

January 22, 2008 at 12:50 pm | In Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Will you permit me to complain for an entry? The other day I was running with a friend, my usual route to and from the museum, and some punk kid rode by on his bike and grabbed my ass. By the time I had realized what had happened, he was too far ahead to cause any bodily harm, and the best I could do was: “you are very ugly!”, which is pretty lame. I’ve cooled down a bit, but I was near-maximum level of pissed off after that happened. I realize that it is a cultural thing; while I try to explain so some of my guy friends here (who are 100% respectful) how inappropriate it is that men whistle and comment on my body as I walk down the street, or verbally make known what they think or what they want to do, my friends tell me that if their female friends are walking past a group of men and they don’t say anything, the girl gets offended. Thankfully, all agree that what happened yesterday is completely inappropriate. With the cat-calls, usually I can deal or just ignore it, but yesterday was the proverbial straw; no matter the intention, sometimes it comes off as a blatant lack of respect. Pardon the ethnocentricity, but I’d take mind games, Sunday night football, and fratasticness over this any day.

To be fair, a lot of female volunteers who have since completed their service and returned to the states have said that they miss the whistles and cat-calls once they leave Peru, and they wonder why the men in the street in the states don’t find them attractive. Go figure.

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FRATASTICNESS??

It’s not everyday that I have to search dictionaries and the web to find the meaning of a word used by one of my brood. But ‘fratastic’ was a challenge! For any other readers in the dark (Mom and Dad, I hope you DIDN’T know what this word meant!), here’s the definition http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fratastic

Comment by Mom — January 22, 2008 #

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Remember how in Italy, all the men would cat-call and harass you on the street, EXCEPT the construction workers?!?! It was this weird inversion of American culture that totally floored me. I remember even trying to sashay extra-invitingly past construction sites, batting my eyelashes, just to see if I could compel them to whistle, or at least click…but nothing. Niente.

Strange, remember??

Comment by Your wife/Sonyell — January 29, 2008 #

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In Chiclayo whistling to girls on the street is very common, and that’s why sometimes I prefer not to walk the streets with my girlfriend. It rarely happens in cool places, indeed. Sorry about what that boy did to you. It also happened to an Scottish girl that I met. She went to Ecuador and a guy on a skateboard past by and “grabbed”… well she asked me for some rude Spanish words so that she could yelled out something more understandable for him or anybody else’s ears for who’d dare to make that again. You could use: Desgraciado!!! it’s not so rude though.

Comment by Fernando — February 3, 2008 #

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Yes, this is a mighty late comment. But, hey, i’m catching up on my Danifiles. This reminds me so much of when I was in Costa Rica a sola, running on the beach in Manuel Antonio. As I ran past three (probably) 11-year old boys, in my sport bra, they all grabbed my chest and ass! I couldn’t believe it! The adolescent tico shock-and-awe campaign ended with me (just like you) blurting out whatever I could in Spanish, which turned out to be “PUTAS! PUTAs!”

Comment by Lana — March 5, 2008 #

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