Holly Kearl Sexual Harassment

Holly Kearl is a long distance runner who has been running since the age of 14. She claims that while running is the time when she experiences the most sexual harassment. Even at a young age men, would drive by and yell derogatory comments at her. In some places where she has lived, the harassment has been so constant that she could count up to 10 times in a short run. She claims that it made her feel like a second-class citizen who couldn’t even go for a run without being harassed. Men have even gone to the extent to follow and chase her during runs. She states that her most alarming experience happened near the end of her first semester of college. She had gone to a party at a teammate’s house after a game. At the end of the party, she planned

90 to 95% of sexually harassed women suffer from some debilitating stress reaction, anxiety, depression, head aches, sleep disorders, weight loss or gain, nausea, lowered self-esteem and sexual dysfunction. Victims of this kind of harassment can lose close to $4.4 million dollars in wages and 973,000 hours in unpaid leave each year in the United States, in fear of having to be in the position where they may be harassed. (Sexual Harassment - Effects of Sexual

Most of the issues come from the fact that women are portrayed as purely sexual objects in many different forms of media, which we are all constantly in tune with. By changing the way that women are viewed in society, there should be less cases of sexual harassment, since people won’t be ingrained with this concept that women are simply here for the pleasure of others. Instead they will be seen as equals and treated with the same respect. To implement this solution we would need to take action by censoring the things that are put out into the media. Advertisements would be made to focus less on beauty and the sexual essence of girls and more on peoples’ interests. The media would need to stop using the body of women to pull in viewers to a certain product. Some potential problems that could occur when trying to implement this solution is that a lot of the time people get very stuck in their own previous ways and are opposed to change. People may be so used to what society and media has ingrained into their minds that they won’t be open minded enough to change their beliefs, even when the media around them has been