In the spring of 1968, 21-year-old Francine Gottfried began working as an IBM machine operator at a data processing plant in lower Manhattan. Gottfried walked past the New York Stock Exchange to get from the subway to work each day, and she soon attracted a group of Wall Street workers who gaped at her large breasts and verbally harassed her. Over the following months, men circulated the details of her daily schedule—she typically emerged from the Broad Street subway at 1:28 pm for her afternoon shift—and the crowd grew.
By September, Gottfried’s body and the men’s aggressive behavior had become national news: “Boom and Bust on Wall Street,” read one New York Magazine article. According to the Associated Press, the group of men stalkers reached more than 5,000 on a single day; another news outlet claimed the group hit a record of 10,000. Police became concerned about the rowdy crowds of men who clogged traffic and crumpled car roofs as they clambered for a better view of Gottfried’s breasts. Soon, Gottfried required a police escort and had to take new routes to work to avoid the street harassment.
But if Gottfried’s treatment seems horrific, she was just one of many women subjected to “girl watching,” a two-decade trend popularized by an ad executive and broadcast through major ad campaigns. Girl watching guides and girl watching clubs of the midcentury (alongside cartoons and advertisements) taught American men how to sexualize and harass women on the street, among other public places. These activities even had a soundtrack: At the very moment Gottfried was being harassed on Wall Street, the song “Girl Watcher” by the American pop band The O’Kaysions was climbing the charts. The history of this girl watching phenomenon speaks volumes about how the “male gaze” was made and then resisted.