My Body Does Not Exist for the Male Gaze
What I learned while traveling as a Black woman.
“Beyonce! Serena Williams!” The brown-skinned man jeered, with one eyebrow raised and one hand cupped as if wanting to reach for my buttocks.
I nodded, smiled and scurried past. I was slogging in the heat of the night, heavy luggage in tow, past thousands of people roaming the streets. Though it was nighttime, sweat trickled down my brows, down my shirt, down my pants, into my shoes, and I was sticky all over. The air was thick and I was looking for my hostel in the middle of the famous Jemaa el-Fnaa Square in Marrakesh’s old city, where thousands of people gathered for a film festival.
Merchants were selling dates and orange juice from oversized carts. Women were designing intricate henna tattoos on willing arms. Disheveled kids were begging adults for money and food. Snake charmers were luring cobras out of their magic vase for a tip. And flaneurs were enjoying the ambiance.
After I lost the man in the crowd who called me the names of the only famous Black women he knew, other young Moroccan men tried to get my attention. They reached out to me, some grabbing my arm as I walked past, and others yelling such things like:
“Where are you from?”
“Are you Africa?”
“Nice ass!”
“Obama!”
I ambled away from the bids for my attention, not sure if I should shake my head, smile, nod or frown. My arms were sore from hauling my luggage from the airport, to the bus, to another smaller bus, then trekking several hundred meters to my hotel with only a map as my guide.
Finally, I rounded a corner to a quieter alley, a sharp contrast to the mayhem of the central square. That’s when I heard another man calling out to me. Normally, I would have ignored this familiar refrain. But I turned around because he was calling me out like he knew me. It was just another flaneur, so I turned back around and kept walking. The man still tried to get my attention by following me and calling out to me in Arabic, so I turned around and told him I was not interested. I assumed he must be trying to sell me something and not just trying to flatter me, given his aggression.
My head shake and a dismissive wave of my hand showing that I did not want to be bothered did not deter this guy. Instead, he walked faster, closing the gap between us, while the street leading to my hostel became more deserted.
My pace quickened, my heart rate accelerated and my breathing became more shallow.
When it became clear that I was not going to lose him while the street before me narrowed to a foreboding dark alley, I turned around swiftly, glared at the strange man square in the face and before he took another step, I howled: “Foutre toi!” with a force that even shocked me.
The man had no idea that I could speak French (the second language in Morocco), so when I hollered “F*ck off” in French, his eyes widened, his jaw became slack and he stumbled backwards, almost in horror. Finally, the perp about-faced back to where he came from.
I let out a sigh of relief and found my hidden hostel a few moments later.
Unfortunately, this situation is not a rare one when I travel. As a Black woman that travels mostly solo, I am used to the varied and interesting ways that men try to get my attention. I have received dozens of unwanted cat calls, winks, lingering eyes, inappropriate touch, and demands for my number in many countries.
It is as though the price for having the audacity to travel in a body that is Black, thick and shapely, without the company of a man, was accepting to avail myself to a man’s passion, desire and fantasy. In fact, Black women have always been over-sexualized and reduced to the sum of her sexual body parts, even in the industrialized Western world. So, how dare I believe myself to only be a tourist, traveler, or temporary resident when traveling in a new land? It was clear that some men believed my body, my very presence, existed for their enjoyment and entertainment.
When I travel, I ask lots of questions and favors because I get lost easily. I am a klutz, I forget details, I frequently go off-the-beaten path and I don’t travel in groups or book curated tours. Therefore, I frequently rely on the kindness of strangers, which requires frequent interactions with people of the opposite sex.
But no matter the age, the race, the income, or the religion of the man, the interaction is rarely a simple one.
I understand what it is to live in the body of a woman as I roam the Earth. I admit that I benefit just as much because, as human creatures, we are innately sexual beings. So, if I get a boost, a favor, an extra, or a discount, I know it was because of the covert or overt nature of our interaction. Is anything ever truly free?
I don’t have a choice.
I don’t get to choose when to enjoy an innocent, flirtatious moment. And when I don’t want to be bothered, I’m still relegated to being an enormous piece of sexual organ when all I wanted to know was which way is the restroom.
And I definitely have no desire or patience to have bids for my attention when I’m sweating bullets, dragging a heavy luggage after a long flight through thousands of people, in an unfamiliar land, looking for a hidden hostel while hungry, tired, and jet-lagged.
Yet here I was, almost running away from a man that didn’t take no for an answer and having to curse him out to get away from me.
I had to. I had no choice.
In my travels, I have to reiterate, both in my body language and my actual words, that my body does not exist for the male gaze. As a human being, the same way someone with features opposite me can walk to their hostel, shop in a store, eat their meal, check out a monument, or ask for directions and not be leered, gawked or perved on is the same way I’d like to be seen for what I am: simply a human being.
Is that too much to ask?
So, as a Black woman, how do I contend with the fact that when I travel, I will likely receive bids for attention, requests for phone numbers, unsolicited cat calls, uncomfortable ogles, inappropriate touch and the risk of more dangerous interactions, such as being followed in Morocco?
I have no good answer for this, because every situation begat a different response. There were times that I wish I responded with a harsher tone, because how dare they? There were times I wish I carried pepper spray. There were times I enjoyed the interaction because I’m keenly aware of the beautiful men that exists worldwide. There were times I felt bad for the men. There were times I felt bad for myself. There were times I wished to be invisible. There were times I felt like a wild woman who runs with wolves. There were times that I felt every bit feminist. And there were times I felt I should acquiesce to being objectified because I really needed that stranger’s help.
I wish I bellowed my disapproval every time I am objectified, like I did in Morocco. But in reality, this isn’t always possible. At times, I don’t even realize what just happened until it’s all over and the perpetrator is long gone, taking a bit of my dignity with him.
As a solo Black female traveler, there is no one thing I can do to deter some men from doing what some men like to do, because I cannot control these men. But there is one thing that I can do that is completely under my control.
I can continue to exist in spaces and take up room in corners where no one looks like me, where women are historically treated as less than, where men dominate, where being thick and shapely is considered ghastly, and where my Black skin is either feared or objectified or both.
Travel is the anti-dote to bad behavior. The more they see me, the more they will get used to my presence. And the more they get used to my presence, the more they will see that I’m just another human being gracing a new locale, and my existence is not an invitation for unsolicited attention.
If not, they will get used to hearing me roar!
For more stories of my travels and the lessons learned while roaming the globe, please follow me at She Writes. She Travels.
