Last Thursday started as a fairly mundane day for me. I woke up, was supposed to be studying for my North American Prehistory exam, and studied for Wetlands Ecology instead. I cleaned the house and organized files on my laptop. At some point, I decided that I wanted some study snacks. The local Walgreens is maybe a five minute walk from my house so I threw on a tank top and running shorts and headed out. I wandered across the cracked sidewalks that denote New Orleans streets and waved at the people I passed. Normal walk. As I approached the turn to go to the store I saw a pleasant enough looking man walking toward me on the sidewalk. I nodded and smiled as the distance between us lessened. He stared straight through me, almost as if I was a ghost and not a living, breathing human being, and took out a flip phone. He held it low to his stomach and I thought "Alright, a little weird, but whatever." But as I turned the corner past him, he pivoted with the phone directed straight at me, clearly photographing or possibly video taping me, looking me over lasciviously.
Hold on. Photographing or video taping me? What? Why? In what world is that alright? Right. Ours. We as a culture accept that people can take photos or video of strangers without asking their consent. Now, I could do a complex analysis of our cultural values and how we have evolved as a society to allow this, but my goal here is not to address why this is the case. Instead, I aim to make a point. We have accepted this behavior for a long time. But it is time to stop.
It is not acceptable in a modern society to photograph strangers without their consent. Now if you're taking a photo of your friend or of a beautiful sunset and somebody is incidentally in the frame, then that's fine. Or if you're at a public event like a parade where there is a reasonable expectation that there will be photography, that is equally ok. But if you just see someone walking down the street and they would be the subject of the photo, no. Let me repeat that: NO. If you just have to have a photo of this person then ask. If they say ok then awesome, good for you. Take your photo and be grateful. But if they say no, don't do it. They don't owe you anything. When you take a photo of somebody without their consent, you are violating their privacy in a huge way, especially when you then proceed to share that photo to social media. The most grievous offenses are unfortunately the most common and that is when you take a photo of someone because they're "hot" or "sexy". You are then sexualizing and objectifying them in addition to violating their privacy. Some people like being sexualized by strangers but most do not, especially when all they wanted to do was buy some Cheetos and Moose Tracks. Just because someone doesn't explicitly tell you "no" doesn't mean it's ok, especially when you didn't ask in the first place.
As for my story, I responded. As soon as he started pivoting around I turned to face him, blocked my face with my hands and said "Please don't take my photo" in a very firm but civil tone. It was hard to not tell him to f*ck off because being sexualized walking to the corner store gets old really fast, but unfortunately, that is typically not the most effective way to get people to recognize they are in the wrong. He lowered his phone and smirked as he slunk away in a very weasel-like fashion. I got my study snacks and he was not there when I walked back that way. Good. Maybe he learned his lesson, but if not, we'll just have to keep teaching the lesson as we have had to for the last couple decades. And maybe I'll just have to start carrying around a sign: No Photos Please.
