“Come over here baby." “A girl like you shouldn’t be walking here alone." “Hey princess." “Nice body."

As an 18-year-old girl, these and many other crude comments have been directed at me when I've walked to school, hung out in the mall or just been in public. Throughout the years, women have been constantly catcalled by men just because of their appearance. The constant stares and whistling makes women uncomfortable. It makes us feel like less of a human and more of an object. It is time to end the catcalling and bring in an era where women can peacefully walk down a street and not be annoyed or afraid of men saying vulgar things to them.

Women are turned into objects when men call them “princess” or “baby," and when women don’t respond the way the catcallers expected, they are subject to even ruder comments for declining the "compliment." First females are objectified, and then they are mistreated by being called obscene names like “prude” just because they do not like being called princess by random men on the street. Women should be able to stand up for themselves if they do not like the comments made. Instead, they are harassed even more by being maltreated by the commentators.

If a girl is wearing shorts and a crop top in the middle of a summer heat wave and is walking down a busy street, is she allowed to be a victim to verbal harassment? The answer is no. When women admit to being harassed by someone, they are told, “Maybe it was because of what you were wearing that caught his attention" — but that is a lie. A person should be able to wear what they want without having to worry about what others think. Yet females are afraid to wear a skirt or shorts because someone might look at them the wrong way.

The saying “boys will be boys” is always repeated when catcalling is brought to topic. Many people do not blame the boys for catcalling. Instead they blame the girls for wearing something too revealing or for doing something that caught the boys' attention. The reality is that we as a society need to teach boys that harassing girls because of how they look or dress is not OK. Boys need to be taught that women are not objects, and it needs to be repeated, especially since the media depicts women as objects many times (for example, through video game characters). Women are human beings who are exhausted of the harassment. Men need to put themselves in women's shoes and see how terrible the harassment is.

I am not saying that all men do it, and I am also not saying that only men catcall because women could also harass a male. Which is exactly why catcalling needs to stop, for the sake of humanity — it is a waste of time. It causes a person to feel bare and dirty. They are noticed not as a person but as an object, and no person should feel that way.