Entertainment
Social media star Lucy Mountain’s powerful and relatable post about women’s safety amid Sarah Everard disappearance goes viral
Lucy Mountain’s powerful post concerning women’s safety has gone viral, following Sarah Everard’s disappearance.
The 33-year-old was last seen leaving a friend’s home in Clapham on the evening of March 3, leading to a huge search for her whereabouts.
The case has sparked a huge debate, with women across the country sharing their own stories about not feeling safe in public, and steps they take.
Taking to Instagram, social media star Lucy shared a powerful message, sharing what women go through on a daily basis when they leave the house.
She posted a photo of a WhatsApp message, which simply read: ‘Text me when you get home xx.’
Alongside the post – which has been liked more than one million times – she began a lengthy caption: ‘I don’t even know how to word this because I feel like my words can’t do justice to how many women are feeling right now.
‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Sarah Everard and how a woman was not allowed to walk home. It’s unbearable. ⠀⠀
‘I’ve also felt a deep sense of connection between myself and other women this week. I’ve had conversations about how being hyper-conscious of our safety is just something we’ve done throughout our entire lives.
‘The deep sense of connection is one of fear.’
Lucy shared a string of moves women have made to stay safe while out, including sharing live locations with friends, holding keys between fingers and ‘theorised our escape routes’.
‘What’s so insidious is that these things don’t even feel like “special safety tools”,’ she continued. ‘They’re literally just engrained behaviours and actions we’ve had to pick up since we were little girls. Because “that’s just the way it is”.
‘“Text me when you get home xxx” is a standard procedure amongst women. Auto-pilot. I wish more men understood the fact that we cannot walk alone at night with headphones in.
‘That whenever we get in Ubers, there’s the lingering thought this could be it. That whenever you say “they’re just being friendly”, you are part of the problem. That whenever we walk past groups of men, our heart beats a little bit faster.
‘That whenever we shout back at sexual harassment in the street, we take yet another gamble at risking our safety.’
Lucy concluded: ‘Stop harassing women. Stop victim-blaming women. And stop burdening women with the weight of other men’s actions.
‘A woman should have been allowed to walk home.’
Lucy’s post has racked up likes on Instagram, and has been shared by users on their stories across the platform.
It comes as a socially distanced vigil for all women who ‘feel unsafe on the streets and face violence every day’ has been planned to take place at 6pm in Clapham Common, south London on Saturday.
Organisers of the event said on Facebook: ‘We shouldn’t have to wear bright colours when we walk home and clutch our keys in our fists to feel safe.
‘It’s wrong that the response to violence against women requires women to behave differently. In Clapham, police told women not to go out at night this week. Women are not the problem.
‘We’ve all been following the tragic case of Sarah Everard over the last week. This is a vigil for Sarah, but also for all women who feel unsafe, who go missing from our streets and who face violence every day.’
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