It’s very appropriate that the Spice Girls are reuniting, because it sure seems like 2018 is working out to be the year of Girl Power. Please enjoy this wild ride of a story, which takes place at a gym and includes the heartwarmingest misunderstanding/show of solidarity you’ll encounter all week.
It starts with some standard banter between consensual romantic partners: this girl, Nicoletta, was working out with her boyfriend, and he started to pull the classic we’ve-never-met-but-damn-girl-you-look-good routine.
But was Maddison Westcott, the hero of our story, about to let this potential creeper ruin Nicoletta’s workout? Hell no she wasn’t.
https://twitter.com/nictoobomb/status/961128738225360896
Westcott later told Buzzfeed that she had heard Ricky, Nicoletta’s boyfriend, through the music playing in her headphones, and considering that it did NOT look like Nicoletta was flirting back, decided to step in.
Obviously Nicoletta explained the situation (and Westcott says she turned “beet red” and apologised), but as the tweet says, she sure did appreciate the gesture – and so did hundreds of other women, who shared their praise for Westcott’s actions, and their own stories of women helping women.
https://twitter.com/TayyMkayy/status/961639718436917251
i was at work and this old man kept talking to me and i was uncomfortable bc i was trying to do my job but i didn’t want to be rude & suddenly a woman came up to me needing help in a diff area so i go with her and she’s like “i don’t really need help i was just saving you” ❤️
— #1 wayv shooter (@TENTHElST) February 8, 2018
Was being stalked on a train before, and some random women helped me. Never been so appreciative in my life
— • catherine • (@itscatherinetbh) February 8, 2018
https://twitter.com/K8Keebs/status/961637624783015936
— ken.doll (@_kendallhowell) February 8, 2018
https://twitter.com/cariadissima_/status/961635807894409216
While there were obviously some blokes who immediately started sounding the “is it EVER okay to talk to women?!?!?!” klaxons, Westcott explained herself clearly in her own Twitter thread, saying:
There are a ton of creepy guys who go to the gym and some of them don’t really know personal boundaries […] I worked at a gym where a woman was raped in the locker room, and in the parking lot. And if other people were aware of their surroundings they may have been able to stop it from happening.
Even though I didn’t know @nictoobomb, I could hear what her boyfriend was saying & he really didn’t sound like her boyfriend. To me it sounded like she was getting hit on and from her reaction, which looking back seems like she was just annoyed with him pretending, was unwanted. So I decided to intervene […]
I was honestly happy that he was her boyfriend because I knew she was safe and wasn’t getting harassed and something bad wouldn’t happen to her.
There it is, folks: just one gal doing her best to give another gal an out of a bad situation, if she needs it. Westcott also has some choice words for the confused blokes:
https://twitter.com/Maddison2036/status/961696827782254592
Year of Girl Power. We’re calling it now.
