A Local Fitness Blogger’s Response to Sexual Harrassment Is Going Viral
Boston fitness blogger and Dare U Fitness instructor Erin Bailey wants none of your catcalling, heckling, or street harassment.
In a recent blog post, which has generated more than 1,600 comments as of this writing, 25-year-old Bailey stands up for herself and the thousands of other women trying to run peacefully in sports bras and spandex. “I often run in just a sports bra because it’s 85 degrees with 50% humidity and I’m training for a half marathon and so 7-10 miles in that heat with layers is plain brutal,” she writes.
Seems reasonable enough. But as she writes, and as many women have experienced, simply jogging around the city can garner some unwanted attention—and Bailey has had enough.
Titled “What Do We Deserve?,” the post details the harassment Bailey has experienced in Boston—from profane comments after an outdoor bootcamp class to catcalling while out for a run—and her strong belief that women deserve better.
The blogger’s words are especially timely this month, in the wake of three separate, high-profile murders of female runners around the U.S. She ends her post with a list of rights for urban runners, and for women in general:
What do I deserve?
I deserve to be treated like a human, not just a woman, because that means something different these days.
And us women, what do we deserve?
We deserve not to feel silenced by your yells.
We deserve to feel empowered for bettering ourselves.
We deserve to feel sexy in our own skin without feeling like we’re here to bait you.
We deserve to speak out without the threat of you lingering on our minds.
We deserve to run outside.
We deserve to be judged on our merits, not our outfits.
We deserve more. A whole lot more.
Word.
