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Abstract

Catcalling: almost every female-presenting person experiences it, yet everyone has a different interpretation of the experience. This ethnographic research project used qualitative surveys of around thirty individuals to first, explore the essential property of catcalling, second, establish the frequency of catcalling and finally, identify and evaluate the range of reactions people have in response to catcalling. Participation in this study was confidential and took place remotely with an online survey that was approved by Chapman University’s Cayuse Internal Review Board. This project used open coding to group the unique interpretations of catcalling. With this grouping, the project then arranged the data in a gradient ranging from negative to positive. Each group was then matched with a past study that has a complementary theory explaining the motivation for catcalling. Given that this issue is so wide-spread, it is important that there is an understanding of how this phenomenon contributes to female emotionality throughout a lifetime. Even more importantly, academic work exploring sexual and stranger harassment often makes its participants use quantitative scales to communicate their experience. Given that sexual and stranger harassment in itself is a dehumanizing experience, this project preserves the personal, unique, qualitative properties of the participants' narratives. Creative activity and research become one with the deliverables of this project. Twenty-two deidentified individual profiles that summarize the participants' responses are the center of the first deliverable, a twenty-page zine. The zine also features samples of the subjects' handwriting, pictures of any relevant personal effects, and artistically related collages, for an engaging, easy to access experience. The second deliverable is a traditional thirty-page research paper, for academic dialogue. The final deliverable is a poster, for easy, quick comprehension.

Hey Beautiful: Calling Out Catcalling Culture

May 2020

This project is an ethnographic study detailing responses to catcalling. The intention of this work is to describe catcalling's emotional depth and moral consequence. Creative work and research become one in this independent research project.

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Hey Beautiful: Calling Out Catcalling Culture: Work
Hey Beautiful: Calling Out Catcalling Culture: Welcome
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Hey Beautiful

The Paper

The zINE

THe Poster

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