Brooklyn High-Schoolers Sexually Harassed While Painting Mural About Sexual Harassment

A group of about 20 high-schoolers painting a street mural about sexual harassment say they’re constantly getting sexually harassed by passerby.

“Every day we always get catcalled, or there’s always comments, people whistling at us,” says Violet Ponce, a 17-year-old from Bushwick who attends the Urban Assembly of Music and Art in DUMBO.

She and her fellow artists are putting up a mural at Myrtle near Broadway, a famous intersection along the border of Bed-Stuy and Bushwick. (Brooklyn rapper Mos-Def says in one of his tracks: “I’m blacker than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle.)

It’s a rough part of town — one that needs this kind of visual statement, says Ponce.

Street harassment is ”something people ignore and don’t think about,” she says. “And they see this, and they’re forced to think about it.”

The mural is a project of Groundswell, a youth art program run out of Gowanus. This summer, one group of high-school girls, including Ponce, was given the theme Gender Violence and the Culture That Perpetuates It — and from there, ”we decided to narrow it down and do street harassment,” says the 17-year-old.

Over two weeks of brainstorming, the girls decided to portray the harassers in the mural as zombies, in order to capture the mindlessness of the act and the influence of media and culture on male behavior.

And as for the female figures in the painting: ”We wanted to sort of show a progression,” says Ponce. “The first part shows a woman looking back, afraid of the zombies. But the women take more empowering poses as you go down. Like, ‘I won’t take this anymore.’”

Along the bottom of the mural is the phrase, “Street harassment is about power and control.”

Although some men passing by on Myrtle just yell and whistle from afar, some come up to talk to the artists.

”Guys will walk by and say, ’You ladies shouldn’t be doing this, it’s too much for you, it’s too heavy, you need help,’” says Ponce.

Sometimes this leads to a conversation about street harassment. “People aren’t aware that it’s a problem,” says Ponce. ”They say, ’It’s a compliment, just take it.’”

Although Ponce doesn’t believe the mural has changed anyone’s habits just yet, she says some of the same guys who used to harass them are more respectful now as they walk by.

“It feels like you’re making an impact,” she says.

You can scope out the mural for yourself at 1102 Myrtle Avenue, along the wall of the Food Bazaar Supermarket. The girls expect to finish by August 24.