What I Wanted to Wear VS What I Wore is the latest instalment in our artist collaboration series highlighting everyday experiences of street harassment. In it, Erin Lee Holland brings our co-founder and campaign director Aakanksha Manjunath’s vision to life through images that perfectly capture the dilemma we often face in the morning when deciding whether to dress for ourselves or to instead focus on others’ potential perception and reaction to us. Below, Erin Lee explores the experiences that lead her to having a personal connection to this topic.

Over the last ten years of my life I have lived in Christchurch, Melbourne, New York City and Mexico City and every city change felt like taking a step up the harassment ladder, but the pinnacle for me was travelling for several months last year through Morocco.

I felt like my previous experiences living in these other cities had made me quite impervious to cat calling, but the harassment in Morocco was so intensely violating and relentless that I couldn’t take it, it also made no difference what I wore. When I realised it was stopping me from even enjoying travelling, I decided to return to live in Melbourne. I arrived back here so worn down like a burnt out match, realising that the trip I had worked and saved so hard to achieve was cut short due to venomous machismo and a serious lack of education on how to interact and treat the opposite sex.

The experience of being cat called or harassed in a public place is all too common for women and members of the LGBTQ community, it usually starts at a young age and it can range from being annoying to terrifying, instilling emotions which range from sheer disappointment in the human race to pure fear.

I asked Melbourne dwellers how they feel when they are on the receiving end of harassment for what they are wearing or how they look in public and if this has an impact on the way they dress and present themselves. Unfortunately, yet not surprisingly the answer was yes, of course, it has an impact. So many of us feel forced to assess what we are wearing before we head out the door in fear of being shamed, harassed or even attacked. This can leave us with a sense of shame and embarrassment, which we do not deserve or should have to accept.

Depending on how safe I feel in the environment, I personally will normally respond to cat callers and harassers. I stop and turn to the person to ask them to repeat themselves, and because they generally have the intelligence level of a goldfish they are almost always unable to answer that question by repeating the phrase. If I feel unsafe, I will ignore it and walk away, taking deep breaths is the best way to get back into my own body and is often the easiest and quickest form of self-care available at that particular moment, leaving me free to carry on with my day.

It is also important to remind yourself that you have done nothing to deserve being addressed that way, that you are not on this earth for anyone else’s ‘consumption’ and the need for men to cat call or hurl abuse is rooted in toxic masculinity which often becomes a competition fuelled performance of masculinity where a man tries to assert his power of his victim to get any kind of attention – be it positive or negative. Because let’s face it, the perpetrators don’t actually care about the response they get; they already know it isn’t going to work. How many times have you seen a woman flash an uncomfortable smile that screams, “Okay asshole, just stay away from me”, but have you ever heard a woman turn around and say, “Oh you like my ass? Great, take my number!” No. Just no.

It can be scary to face your harasser and definitely not always the best idea, all I can supplicate is that if you see someone being cat called or harassed, whether you are a man or a woman please support that victim, stand up for them! Individually, we can do more to call out such behaviour to intervene and not let it happen to others. But governments and parents need also take action so that young girls and boys don’t grow up thinking street harassment is normal or acceptable and victims don’t feel that they have to hide themselves or live silently with the consequences. Lastly, wear whatever you feel like, be proud, strong and stay safe!

Erin Lee Holland is an editorial and documentary photographer originally from New Zealand. Currently based in Melbourne, her work applies environmental portraiture with habitats to examine social issues in a way that challenges the traditional format of documental photography. She has contributed various articles to Vice Magazine with her work being published in outlets such as CNN, The Guardian and Frankie, among others.