Spectrum News reporter Brianna Hamblin shared footage of her being harassed by men on the street after it was inadvertently caught as she was preparing for a shot.
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The clip opens up with Hamblin standing on a quiet suburban street, waiting for things to start rolling. Then, two men walk by behind her.
“You look nice, by the way,” one says. She thanks him, and the other kicks it up a notch: “You look beautiful as hell. Goddamn.”
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They start asking what’s going on, and Hamblin explains that they can “go watch Spectrum News,” clearly trying to get them to move on.
But rather than leave, they seem to take that as an invitation to not only keep talking, but to get more inappropriate. “See, that’s why I can’t be left alone with a Black woman,” one of the men says off-screen. “Or a Mulatto chick. Because I can’t stand these f—king white girls.”
“Alright. We are done here. Have a great rest of your day,” Hamblin tells them.
“You are sexy as f—k,” the man reiterates, before finally seeming to leave the vicinity.
Hamblin shared the footage to Twitter as an example of what it’s like being a woman, and “especially a woman reporter out in the field,” in a world where a lot of men think it’s okay to objectify any woman they see.
In a subsequent Twitter thread, she explains that while the first man’s compliment was fine, it was the second man who immediately made things uncomfortable.
“The audacity of the things men say to me never ceases to amaze me,” Hamblin wrote. “What makes you think women want to be talked to that way? In no way is this endearing. It’s uncomfortable. It’s gross.”
She added that expressing “a disgusting fetish based on stereotypes” is racist and that pitting groups of women against each other to show “praise” for one isn’t actually a compliment.
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People on Twitter chimed in with their own shows of support after watching what Hamblin was subjected to.
I think men like that want that reaction. I really do. It makes them feel powerful. They see it and keep talking. Have you ever had a man sincerely apologize for behavior like that? I never have.
— sun’s out
(@HillckHill) July 24, 2021
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“To all the women who related to this, I’m sorry and want to give you a big virtual hug,” Hamblin said after the thread went viral. “Thank you for sharing your own experiences too so men realize how common and unwanted this is.”
*First Published: July 27, 2021, 6:14 am
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