--- title: Fitness Expert Erin Bailey Speaks Out Against Catcalling description: Fitness expert Erin Bailey recently wrote a blog post about harassment, catcalling and the need to respect female athletes canonical: https://time.com/4454722/erin-bailey-fitness-catcalling-harassment/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-16T20:42:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:03:10.260Z og:title: This Fitness Expert Wants None of Your Catcalling og:description: "I deserve to be treated like a human" og:url: https://time.com/4454722/erin-bailey-fitness-catcalling-harassment/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd8fdfb2939ef58f6/6988a297cd1bba099c701fe6/erinbailey.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: erin-bailey-catcalling-fitness og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Fitness Expert Wants None of Your Catcalling twitter:description: "I deserve to be treated like a human" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd8fdfb2939ef58f6/6988a297cd1bba099c701fe6/erinbailey.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Fitness Expert Erin Bailey Wants None of Your Catcalling by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Aug 16, 2016 8:42 PM UTC  jenny moloney photography—jennymoloney.com by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Aug 16, 2016 8:42 PM UTC [Erin Bailey](https://www.instagram.com/ebailey%5Ffitness/) is a 25-year-old fitness instructor with a message: She’s sick of being harassed. In an [essay](http://www.ebaileyfitness.com/blog/2016/8/11/mv90npean8odluhssps48wzbjaie3x) titled “What do I deserve?” on her [personal blog](http://www.ebaileyfitness.com/), Bailey describes numerous times she’s walked or [run](http://time.com/4443290/last-mile-run-mental-tricks/) on a street and in a park and men have stopped her, followed her and made obscene comments to her face. While taking part in an outdoor bootcamp one day, Bailey wrote in the essay, she “had a guy come over to me from across the park and start talking to me from a few feet away. I took my headphones out thinking he was asking me something, instead my ears were filled with profane things he ‘wanted to do to me.'” When Bailey’s working out, she wrote: “I deserve to be treated like a human, not just a woman, because that means something different these days.” She continues: --- > “” --- Although one male commenter wrote, “If it’s just a cat call, or something mildly annoying, but not particularly harassing or bothersome, take it as a compliment,” Bailey doesn’t agree. “There are so many ways to compliment a woman respectfully,” she told Motto via email. “Catcalling is not one of them.” She told Motto she decided to speak out because she was upset. “These harassment occurrences were starting to happen more and more to myself this summer and as soon as I would share one with a friend, they had three stories just like it,” she said. “It was horrendous.” For Bailey, the [gym](http://motto.time.com/4282903/how-to-have-fun-working-out/) represents a safe space—the place where she feels “the most empowered.” Bailey said the gym is “the one place I feel men should respect me most because there I feel like we’re on the [same playing field](http://motto.time.com/4279643/women-soccer-gender-discrimination-crossfit/).” But even at her “safe zone” at the [gym](http://motto.time.com/4346583/women-worse-gym/), Bailey said she’s faced [harassment](http://motto.time.com/4375389/workplace-harassment-eeoc-discrimination/). She described one particularly horrifying time: “I had a man come up to me a couple months ago at the water fountain in the gym as I was filling up my water bottle he waited patiently. He then told me he liked my leggings, that they made my a– look great, and they’d look better off.” [_Follow Motto on Facebook_](https://www.facebook.com/mottoworkplaylive/)_._ Bailey’s article about harassment while exercising comes at a particularly tense time for female runners. Recently, three women in the U.S. were slain while jogging: [Katrina Vetrano](http://time.com/4447566/karina-vetrano-family-raises-money-find-killer/) in New York, Google employee [Vanessa Marcotte](http://time.com/4444654/google-employee-found-dead/) in Massachusetts and [Alexandra Nicolette Brueger](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2016/07/30/cops-seek-info-shooting-death-rose-twp-woman/87820978/) in Michigan. Bailey said the murders of the runners were “very scary.” “I had so much in common with those women, that could have been me or my friends,” she said. “It was terrifying. But the reaction was worse. People began to blame these women for what they were wearing or doing as the cause, when that is absolutely not why they were killed.” Bailey’s blog post has received mixed reviews, leaving her “shocked” and “humbled.” When asked if any specific reaction stood out, she mentioned one about a father who made his two sons, ages 11 and 14, read the post. That’s how she thinks change can happen, by educating “younger generations how to respect each other both men and women.” Bailey believes in making people stronger, not tearing them down. Her own motto “we all lift each other up” can help illustrate exactly what women “deserve.” Read her entire post [here](http://www.ebaileyfitness.com/blog/2016/8/11/mv90npean8odluhssps48wzbjaie3x). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4454722/erin-bailey-fitness-catcalling-harassment/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4454722/erin-bailey-fitness-catcalling-harassment/"},"headline":"Fitness Expert Erin Bailey Wants None of Your Catcalling","datePublished":"2016-08-16T20:42:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:03:10.260Z","description":"\"I deserve to be treated like a human\"","url":"https://time.com/4454722/erin-bailey-fitness-catcalling-harassment/","keywords":["motto"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd8fdfb2939ef58f6/6988a297cd1bba099c701fe6/erinbailey.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltd8fdfb2939ef58f6/6988a297cd1bba099c701fe6/erinbailey.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"erin-bailey-catcalling-fitness","caption":"","creditText":"jenny moloney photography—jennymoloney.com","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4454722/erin-bailey-fitness-catcalling-harassment/","name":"Fitness Expert Erin Bailey Wants None of Your Catcalling"}}]}] ```