Is This the Perfect Response to Catcalling?

If you're a woman and you've ever left your home, chances are you've been catcalled. Catcalling may be whistling, yelled propositions, demands that you smile, or maybe commentary or critique of your various body parts. There's a line of thinking that if catcalling upsets you, you need to "relax." I don't agree. Nor, it appears, does Adult Wednesday Addams, a grown-up version of the deadpan kid from "The Addams Family." We loved her back then because she always did exactly what she wanted, and threw sarcasm in the face of social pressure. Now, we love her all grown up, and dealing with catcalling, which is actually a form of sexual harassment. (Learn more about sexual equality in Feminists Have More Fun: A Sex Manifesto.)

I love that the catcalls begin with a demand for a smile, because she'd be a lot prettier. Goodness knows that women have an obligation to be as pretty as they can. You never know when some man might drive by. When Wednesday doesn't respond positively to the demand for smiles, she's called a bitch. This is pretty common, and one of the ways we know that a catcall isn't really a compliment, or kind at all. When we're being kind, we don’t insult people for not giving us the reaction we want.

Wednesday follows the catcallers home by tracing the scent of their popular, name-brand body spray. The fellas defend their catcalling, but Wednesday's pleased that they think their catcalls are complimentary, because she's brought friends - big, scary friends - to compliment the catcallers. I've heard critique that scaring the catcallers with men is a tad homophobic. But see, these men aren't imposing because they're gay (or not - their actual orientation isn't made clear), but because they are terrifying. And they're planning to follow our catcallers around paying them the same sort of "compliments" all day long. That should give these guys something to smile about, right? After all, they'd be a whole lot prettier if they did.