When Older Men Hit On You - What I Needed to Hear at 15

I just saw a post on Reddit that made me pause, and remember.

The question was "Women who were hit on by grown men when you were a teenager, what did you do?"  The girl asking the question was 15 years old.

The one thing that men will never understand is how this feels when you are a young girl.  Your whole world changes, forever.  It is the moment your childhood ends because you realise that you are no longer safe.  You can no longer dance carefree through the world as you used to.  It does not change in one day, it happens incrementally.  The rules that will change you and cage you appear so very quickly.

I hit puberty early and started to develop breasts when I was 11.  

I used to go to a park very close to our home which had swings, a roundabout and a slide.  I used to like going to play there when I was younger and even at 11/12 I would still go there, on my own, swinging around on the roundabout with a book.

That particular day, while happily sitting on the roundabout, a group of older boys turned up.  They were probably 15 years old.  They started to talk about me.  "Look, she's got tits already!".  They could see I was still so very young.  They came closer to me, asking me if they could touch them.  I ran away home and thankfully nothing more happened.

There was an awkwardness, a lack of understanding and some fear about that day.  But it was explained away as silliness of older boys and not to worry about it.  Although with a warning perhaps not to go there alone again.  

Don't go out on your own, it isn't safe.

I started to notice that adult me were starting to treat me differently.  At first I brushed it off until I started to recognise the signs.  The way they spoke to you was different.  Not like you speak to a child.  Almost flirting.   But subtly.  It was the look in the eyes that did it.  The way they would tell me I was so pretty and that all the men would be after me soon.  With a certain look in their eyes.  The way they pressed just that bit closer than I was used to, than I felt uncomfortable with.

Back then, I  did not understand their intentions, but I knew that something had changed and I did not like the way they looked at me.  The way they stepped that little bit closer to me.  I felt like a rabbit being eyed by a fox.

Be careful with adult men.

The older I got, the more developed I looked, the more this came to happen.  Some men, even men I had known as a child looked at me in a different way.  Like I was a woman.  Except I wasn't.  By the time I was 13 my fellow male pupils started to notice my shape too.  The size of my breasts gained me a nickname at school, which I won't share here.  There was also a presumption that I was "up for it", purely based on that my breasts were large.

Cover up or you are asking for it.

Over time, as we all do, I learned how to get away from the older men and deal with them.  Boys were a a different story and the lessons of how to deal with my peers look far longer.

That is the advice that I shared on the Reddit post.

 I went through this. From 12. Be strong is the first thing. It can be hard and they can be persistent. I will tell you what I used to do, which worked generally.

Say loudly "You do know I'm only 15 right? Then walk away.

If you are stuck in the conversation or the room with the man, say at a family party or something, look at him direct in the eye and say to him in a normal tone "This isn't the way you should be speaking to a 15 year old. Leave me alone". Then walk away.

If you are in public, go up to the nearest woman and tell her what he is doing/saying. She WILL look after you. I never had a woman walk away from me. Because we have all been there.

Be strong OP. Look them in the eyes when you say the above to them. Make them feel as uncomfortable as they did to you.

Looking them in the eye was definately the key for me. Making them understand that I knew what they were doing and that I knew that he knew that how he was behaving was wrong.

Sometimes if I was at a gathering or party where I knew other women, I would repeat what the man had said to me to the nearest woman. "Hey Aunty June, Bob thinks I should go out on a date with him, what do you think?"

I was strong because I had to be. But there are things that I wish that I could tell that 15 year old girl now.

• Your worth does not go up and down depending on what you look like.
• If he is over 5 years older than you and he is flirting with you, do not trust him.
• It is not "cool" if an older men is flirting with you, no matter how attractive he is. He is a predator.
• If someone does something bad to you, TELL SOMEONE. It is not your fault.
• You will be ok, I promise.

What would you tell your 15 year old self?