Jen Corey was crowned Miss DC in 2009 and made it to the top 10 of the Miss America Pageant in 2010. A tall and striking blonde, Jen has battled with overzealous men approaching her since she was a teenager. An incident at a D.C. bar prompted her to use her platform as a beauty queen to speak out against street harassment, a topic that is often dismissed as just ‘boys being boys.’ But Jen and other women argue that there is something more sinister that lies beneath the motivation to aggressively cat-call or approach women in public places: “Street harassment is almost never about sex. It’s about power. Which is the same way we view rape. So saying street harassment is not a big deal is opening up the doorway for men to view women as an object to be obtained.”
Jen herself was physically violated on the D.C. metro train in 2013 while coming home from work one night. This is her first interview about the incident.
You don’t have to be a beauty queen to experience street harassment, a fact that we will show through a montage of stories with a variety of women. Vocativ will also give viewers a firsthand look at the experience of street harassment by strapping hidden cameras onto one of our female interviewees as she walks down a busy New York City street.
In addition to Jen Corey, Vocativ interviewed Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director for Women in Media & News, and several members of Hollaback. To report street harassment, visit ihollaback.org.
After you watch the video, be sure to check out Mindy’s article on what it all means, entitled “What Does Street Harassment Really Mean?…A Female Perspective.“
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