Personal Narrative: Breaking The Norm

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Pages: 3

Figuring out what norm to break for my assignment was becoming difficult, until I heard one of my customers at work ask me ‘If I had fries to go with that shake?”. In response all I could think was “Would you like a crop dust to go with that pizza sir?” After that everything fell into place, and I knew exactly what norm I wanted to break. This last week I decided to catcall men. I have to be honest, after doing it twice for the assignment I did it a few more times, just to humor myself. While planning my first nervous attempt at making a man uncomfortable, I decided not to do it to someone at school. I would prefer my test subject to be someone I’d hopefully never see again, so I went to the mall. The reason I chose to go here was simply because I have had young and old men say some questionable things to me here since I was in middle school. As my friend and I …show more content…
Every week I see mostly my fellow waitresses get harassed by men, which makes me sad, and worried for them. My first experience catcalling made me nervous, and uncomfortable. I actually felt really bad, even though the guy didn’t seem to be bothered by it, and same with the second man. After the first guy though, I didn’t feel as nervous about doing it. I felt like I was getting back at every person who has made me feel like dirt when catcalling, but that doesn’t make it right. I know from experience that it can make men or women feel unsafe, uncomfortable, and embarrassed. One of the things I would change about my experiment would be my catcalling skills. I had no idea what to say, so I would kind of play stuff through my mind and when I’d finally reach the situation it would be gone. I also was hoping for a negative reaction, I really wanted someone to dramatically yell at me. I didn’t care if it was a random person or the subject I chose. I also would opt out of bringing a friend with me, her giggling didn’t help, but made it