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Woman Takes Selfies With The Men Who Have Just Catcalled Her

Woman Takes Selfies With The Men Who Have Just Catcalled Her

A 20-year-old student from the Netherlands is making a powerful statement about sexual objectification by turning the tables.

Noa Jansma took selfies with her catcallers for a month and posted them to Instagram.

From August to Sept. 29, Jansma posted 24 photos to @dearcatcallers, captioning many with the words men shouted at her.

“Sexy girl Where you goin’?? Can I come with you ?” reads one.

“Weheeee horny girl,” another is captioned.

“It’s not a compliment,” she wrote on Instagram.

“By making the selfie, both the objectifier and the object are assembled in one composition. Myself, as the object, standing in front of the catcallers, represents the reversed power ratio which is caused by this project,” she wrote in the same post.

Jansma admitted to Buzzfeed News that she didn’t know the depths of the problem until she was fully immersed in the project.

“I thought men would be suspicious of me, that they would understand my motives when I was taking selfies with them. So I was kind of fearful,” she told the outlet.

“But most of the time they have their thumbs up, they’re happy because they honestly think that they’re complimenting me,” she continued. “They really didn’t care about me. They never realized that I was unhappy.”

In other photos you can see men actually cozying up to Jansma and placing their arms around her.

“They’re not at all suspicious because they find what they do completely normal,” she told Dutch newspaper Het Parool in a quote translated by the Independent.

Since she started the project, Jansma has gained more than 170,000 followers — many of whom are women.

Jansma wrote in her most recent post that her part of the project is over, but to prove that this is “a global phenomenon,” she would like to pass the reins onto other women around the world who could document their experiences with catcalling as well.

But, she tells Buzzfeed, she wants to find “responsible” women to do it.

“Because what I do is a bit risky,” she said.

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