While we may have had some understanding that women often get harassed while they’re trying to go about their business in the past, recent years have made it clear both how often it happens and how ubiquitous it is.
Thanks to the growing capacity to report and record these incidents that the modern age has given us, we’ve been able to get a better sense than ever of what our peers have to deal with on a daily basis.
At the same time, there seems to be a growing trend on social media (particularly Instagram) to try and fight back against the misleading impression that what we see on the platform tends to give about what our bodies “should” look like.
And just as some models and influencers on Instagram try to show the reality behind their photos, one woman is giving us a peek behind the curtain to address the other problem we’ve been discussing.
After all, catcalling on the street isn’t the only way that some people can get creepy nowadays.
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If you were to take a trip to Instagram model Paige Woolen’s main account, you’re likely to see a lot of photos of her lounging around in swimsuits.
This is hardly an unusual sight on the platform, but it seems that her frequent “thirst traps” have attracted the interest of over 300,000 people.
But what makes Woolen stand out from the pack is the way she gives us a bracing look into an occupational hazard that many of her contemporaries don’t talk about.
Namely, that her DMs are often flooded with explicit messages that manage to come off as desperate, bitter, and entitled all at once.
She gets enough of them, in fact, that she decided to start a second account just for these messages and her classic responses to them called @dudesinthedm .
As she wrote on the account’s “about me” page , “I found justice in replying and I feel supported in sharing those replies here.”
But while she may have started this account for a serious reason, her comebacks to these messages can be pretty funny.
We can see a choice example of one of the tamer DMs she gets here, but another user who was also both hungry and “excited” told her, “I like you how I like my turkey: moist, smokin’ hot, with big breast, lying on your back ready to be eaten.”
All she had to say to this was, “You lost me at moist” and there’s no doubt that so many people who hate that word feel seen right now.
I’ll spare you the most disgusting DMs Woolen receives, but it’s still pretty easy to get a sense of how annoying her more aggressive followers can be.
That said, it’s always fun to act like you don’t know what people are talking about when they come at you with something like this.
I doubt the answer would’ve been much different if he went with an eggplant emoji instead. I’m just imagining him getting increasingly frustrated as he tries to explain that he’s not a gardener.
I guess this guy gets a few points for his creative use of ASCII art, but he loses all of them for his entitled attitude.
And yeah, we can definitely say that he walked right into that one. Imagine spending all that time making the little guy just to end up with egg on your face.
I’d say “try again,” but I don’t think anyone actually wants that.
Still, there might be hope for some of them as this guy at least seems more self-aware than his more meatheaded peers.
Granted, it took a little too long to realize that message was weirder than he thought, but a lot of the people who end up in Woolen’s DMs wouldn’t have gotten the hint no matter what she said.
Yeah, we’re grading on a curve here for sure.
As I’ve said, those are some of the lighter examples she’s had to deal with. But if you’ve got a strong enough stomach, you can see all of Woolen’s clapbacks here .
