Walking Around The Mall Essay

Decent Essays
Walking through a mall on a late September day, minding your own business and suddenly a random person approaches you and compliments your hair verbally then proceeds to become physical by touching it gently, without permission. How would you react? Would you take the compliment or react in an aggressive way? If the person asked in a polite way if they could touch your hair, would you accept or not?
Walking around a mall, enjoying yourself, shopping alone or whomever your with, you don’t think twice about people approaching you in a way as such. Touching other people’s hair without permission is out of the norm in the United States. Simply complimenting someone’s hair is nice, but going out of your way to invade personal space to touch the
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I approached a white female with long, blonde hair in her mid twenties. “Oh my gosh, I love your hair” while I was touching her hair she quickly turned, gave me a disturbed look and replied with “thank you so much” then quickly walked away. Spencer noticed that the three friends whom she was with looked at me with a dirty glare and rolled their eyes as they walked away. My mother from a far said people from a distance looked but did not make any face of it and people didn’t really notice because the response was so low key and did not make much of a …show more content…
I knew this was invading personal space and would take it to a whole different level if I would ask before doing. I felt the way I did because I would not want people touching my hair if it was me, like I said that is my personal space and it is easier to just ask. I was more uncomfortable violating the norm than the people because I know what I did was wrong and I had to force myself into a different mindset thinking it was okay for a second to get a reaction that could elevate in so many ways. I was surprised that people reacted the way I anticipated, I got yelled at which was clearly a given, got dirty looks, fingers pointed at me, rolled eyes, and even smacked. Smacked was something I wasn’t thinking of, but I do understand why I did, I invaded personal space and everyone has different stand points about their own personal space. I wasn’t asking for a polite “thank you so much”. The one difficulty I came across with this experiment was where and when I would do it. I figured a mall but what time do people usually go and how often do people just stand around? I chose the weekend because that’s when people usually aren’t working and have time to run errands and get stuff done. When people go to malls they usually don’t stand around as much as you would think, most people go and shop to get stuff done. Its hard finding the right people and making sure there is

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