WEST WINDSOR — When Elizabeth Harman came across a billboard she found offensive while strolling through Princeton MarketFair mall last week, she simply posted her concerns on Facebook.

But her friends reacted, a blogger wrote about it, and before she knew it a petition was circulating online that succeeded in getting the sign taken down.

“The issue of street harassment is really normalized in our society. It is seen as the way things are,” said Harman, a philosophy professor at Princeton University. “I felt like the language on that sign perpetuated that.”

The billboard, used inside the mall to block off a storefront that was under construction, included a cartoon image of a young woman and offered an apology to patrons.

“We apologize for the whistling construction workers, but man you look good!” the sign read.

“I didn’t want my daughter to think that was a normal way to think about men yelling at women,” Harman said.

On Sunday afternoon, Holly Kearl, founder of the Stop Street Harassment organization in Washington, D.C., created an online petition at Change.org to have the sign removed, thinking she could get a couple hundred endorsements to send to mall management.

The results were unexpected, she said.

Within 24 hours, more than a thousand people had signed the online petition. There were nearly 2,100 by yesterday afternoon, and Kearl found herself fielding media inquiries.

“It seemed to have struck a nerve,” she said.

After she contacted the mall, the management took the sign down Monday evening and replaced it with a plain white board. Robyn Marano, vice president of marketing for MarketFair, did not respond to requests for comment.

Kearl said it was the sign’s presence in a shopping mall that had particularly contributed to her frustration.

“In the mall context, there are so many teenage girls,” she said.

The sign’s message is that “it is their fault they look so good,” she said. “That was especially problematic for me.”

Her organization aims to make public places welcoming and comfortable for everyone, particularly women, she said.

Contact David Karas at (609) 989-5731 or dkaras@njtimes.com

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