It began with a simple idea: I asked women I knew if they would write their experiences of street harassment on a T-shirt. Two fellow women’s rights activists from NOW-NYC and I were preparing a spoken word performance for the NYC Anti-Street Harassment Rally, and we thought it would be incredibly powerful if, during the performance, we each allowed our bodies to carry the proverbial weight of all that women endure as they attempt to navigate their daily lives — walking home or to work or to school, riding the bus or the subway, eating a meal at a restaurant or having a drink at a bar — amid the ever-present threat of street harassment.

What started out as a small project blossomed, as more and more women began to share their experiences with me. The ink of their markers bled into the fabric, permanently inscribing on my shirt thirty-eight stories of street harassment written in sixteen languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, French, Hindi, Italian, Jamaican Patois, Lebanese, Moroccan, Nepali, Serbian, Spanish, and Tagalog.

The examples they provided range from the cruel to the vulgar, from the heartbreaking to the violent. What too many women know — and what too many of these writings encapsulate — is that statements harassers often pass off as innocent or even complimentary can escalate to violence all too quickly should the intended recipient reject those advances.

Collectively, these stories provide a multicultural demonstration of how street harassment is a global problem, a demonstration of how far we still have to go before every woman, everywhere, can feel safe and respected in her own body — and as she moves within that body to navigate the public spaces where she lives her life — as is her right.