What I would say to Snoop Dogg
What would I have said, if I’d been Stephanie Clattenburg, camera on my shoulder pointing at the rapper Snoop Dogg when he started to lewdly comment on my body?
The rapper was in Truro, N.S., recently, making a guest appearance on the Trailer Park Boys television set.
Clattenburg is a young camerawoman with CBC. She was filming reporter Elizabeth McMillan’s attempt to interview the celebrity, who many in town were in a flap about. But he was distracted, he said, by her “camera girl.” “She’s thick,” he said. “Damn.” ( Thick, I’ve since learned, means nice booty and legs in urban rapperspeak. It’s the opposite of stick insect.)
He then continued: “I wasn’t even looking down, like that. Now I’m forced to look down at the camera. Damn, look at that. Look at the s--on that critter!”
According to his vulgar, violent defenders in the Land of Twitter, that was a compliment too. Strangely, Clattenburg didn’t take it that way. She went beet-red, she said. “I felt very embarrassed, very belittled,” she said in a subsequent CBC interview. “Is a compliment something that makes women feel belittled, embarrassed and laughed at?”
Clattenburg didn’t just feel laughed at. She was being laughed at: After Snoop Dogg made the critter comment, the airspace around him erupted in male laughter.
McMillan chuckled uncomfortably and soldiered on with her interview. You can hear her brain muttering, “Let’s just get one lame quote and get the eff out of here.”
She later told me that what I hadn’t seen on television was Snoop Dogg telling her he was planning to do a strip tease that night. She had responded with “that’s not something we are interested in,” at which point he shifted his bull’s-eye to Clattenburg.
The camerawoman kept her eye in her viewfinder. She sucked it up.
That’s what I would have done, at her age. That’s what I’ve done many times in the past, when a fireman commented on my legs in the middle of an interview, or when my boss called me gorgeous in a meeting.
But then, for weeks later, my brain replayed the scene in exquisite detail, spinning every snappy response that might have towelled the grime off the encounter, in my mind.
There’s the indignant, Feminism 101 tack: “That is sexual harassment. It is degrading and belittling to me. Don’t talk to me like that.”
There’s fire-for-fire: “Mr. Dogg, you are a dirty old pervert. Do you think anyone my age is remotely interested in your body, not just your money?”
How about the legal: “I am working. This is my work space. You are sexually harassing me. I refuse to continue working under these conditions.”
Then, there is humour: “How nice, Snoop. Give us a twirl to see what goodies you have to offer us from way up there.”
My friend Judith Taylor, who is a women’s studies professor at the University of Toronto, suggested this approach. She said I was missing the playfulness here, and that she’d be flattered if Snoop Dogg said that to her publicly.
We laughed at each other. She, like me, has entered her 40s. Our days of brooding about objectifying things strange men say to us are almost over. We’ve grown confident just as we’re becoming invisible.
That’s the power of flagrant, streetside sexism. It targets young women, who are beautiful and unblemished and still unsure of things.
They’re not sure they’ll get their boss’s backing if they put down their camera and say, “this interview is over.” They’re not sure if the union will back them, since they’re likely on contract. If they get to keep this job, they’re not sure they’ll ever be sent out into the field again. And they’re not sure they’ll ever get another job in journalism.
Both McMillan and Clattenburg said they were startled. That happens even when you get older. You can’t believe someone is saying that to you, and you wonder what you did to deserve it. That’s why we replay the scene in our minds, sharpening our claws with each turn. Next time, we’ll be ready!
Not that women have cornered the market on sport-like harassment. I’m sure CP24’s Nathan Downer has dug through the bloody pulp of his interview with Mike Tyson. (The boxer repeatedly called Downer a “piece of s---,” after the journalist had the audacity to ask him the possible negative impact of his endorsement of Rob Ford, given Tyson’s record as a convicted rapist.)
It just happens to women so regularly, it’s considered pedestrian. Can’t you take a compliment? I’m praising your body, which we’d all just love to touch. Why don’t you like that, camera girl? Clattenburg said if she put the camera down every time someone said something sexist, she’d never shoot. Other female CBC reporters have chillingly recounted similar encounters. The men around Snoop Dogg fuelled him. Not one intervened, even with smackdown humour. There was Bubbles, with his big glasses, smiling away. They were all saying, with their laughter, that they were cool with sexual harassment.
Sexism is a cultural problem. It’s not up to women caught in its cruel spotlight to combat it alone. But you sure do feel better. In the end, I think the best retort is the one made famous by CityNews reporter Shauna Hunt. I’d call it the ‘here’s the rope to hang yourself’ tack: “Snoop Dogg, why would you say that to me? Why would you want to humiliate me here, in front of all these people and your friends? Didn’t you say just last month on SkyNews that your belittling attitude to women has changed?” Catherine Porter can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca