“cheer up luv” with Eliza Hatch
Trigger Warning: this article discusses themes of harassment and sexual assault
May 30th, 2023
By Liv Collins
On an overcast Wednesday morning, I am greeted by a colourful figure over Zoom. Wrapped up in a pink and blue scarf is the artist and activist, Eliza Hatch. Eliza is the founder of the ground-breaking project cheer up luv, which documents the stories of womxn and non-binary people who have experienced public harassment. On the cheer up luv website, she pairs vivid portraits shot in film alongside short texts detailing each person’s experience with street harassment. The overall effect is flooring. To see a lattice of hundreds of people, speaking openly about a difficult subject whilst looking directly into your eyes, is illuminating, heart-breaking, and immensely powerful.
Eliza founded cheer up luv in 2017, after a man walked past her in the street and told her to ‘cheer up’. She shares that this wasn’t the first time she’d been told to smile by a stranger in the street, noting that “it was one of many many experiences and by far not the worst experience of street harassment that had ever happened to me.” She adds how it was the oddness of the phrase that struck a chord, “I just thought it was a weird phrase that was so gendered, and only seemed to be directed at womxn and people of marginalised genders.” This sparked Eliza to question why this behaviour was acceptable, and conversations with close friends revealed that they shared similar (and worse) experiences of public harassment. Public sexual harassment refers to unwanted sexual behaviour, from physical actions to verbal comments, such as catcalling, following someone and non-consensual physical contact – which leave the individual feeling threatened and degraded.
Florence, 2017
But what particularly surprised Eliza, were the opinions of her male friends. They couldn’t believe the experiences that she and her peers had gone through, and suggested that they sounded like compliments or perhaps they were being oversensitive. Eliza says that it was at this point, “I just realised that there was a huge disconnect between the experiences that me and my female friends were having and the experiences of my male friends. Who had had absolutely no idea about what we’d been going through for our whole lives, or at least since we were like 11,12,13.” This was the turning point for when Eliza decided to do something. With film camera in hand, and the determination to shine a light on the shadows of sexual harassment, cheer up luv came to be. It is worth noting that Eliza founded this project in a pre #MeToo world.
Eliza notes how the original aim of cheer up luv, was to help the survivors reclaim their experiences. In order to do this, she focused on photographing them in the locations where they had suffered street harassment, or in a similar (and not triggering) location. Every photoshoot was survivor-led, meaning that Eliza would approach each individual with the basic framework to how the shoots work, and then take their cue on how to go about it. “Every single photoshoot is unique in that way because there is no blanket one-size-fits-all approach. We are all different, especially if you’ve had a traumatic experience. It’s not like we’re setting up a studio and everyone is sitting on the same seat.”
“We are all different, especially if you’ve had a traumatic experience.”
She notes how some individuals chose to wear the same clothes they were wearing when the incident happened. I find this innately powerful, as often survivors find it difficult to be able to wear the clothes and items that they associate with experiences of trauma. The collaborative and compassionate approach that Eliza utilises throughout cheer up luv, enables each individual to reframe their story and reclaim control over their experiences with sexual harassment. Through doing this, Eliza creates a space where everyone feels safe, seen and heard.
Another aim of cheer up luv, is to highlight the prevalence and normalisation of sexual harassment in public spaces. Eliza wanted the viewer to be able to look at each photograph, and situate the person in that scenario, “and be able to recognise like, oh that’s just a normal street, or that’s just a normal bus stop … and be able to identify that these things are not abnormal, they’re extremely normal, and they happen in very recognisable places.” Eliza adds that there is nothing extraordinary about public harassment, apart from the fact that it should not be happening on such a vast scale. To put this into perspective, research from the Office for National Statistics and the Guardian, state that 24,000 womxn experience public harassment every day in the UK.
Even more shockingly, Eliza reveals that the majority of sexual harassment cases happen in daylight. “It has been statistically proven that the highest volume of sexual assault and instances of sexual harassment happen during rush hour. Like when people are just going to work in the morning.” She adds that this horrific fact completely disproves a lot of the myths surrounding sexual harassment, like you shouldn’t walk home by yourself or wear ‘revealing’ clothing, and that it usually happens down dark alleys. “It does happen alone down dark alleys, but it also happens with hundreds of people standing right next to you.”
It is important to state that there is a huge imbalance at who sexual harassment is directed at, as minority groups are statistically more likely to be targeted. For example, a new report from the University of York, discloses that people of colour are disproportionately more likely to be victims of public sexual harassment in the UK. Eliza reflects that when we look at this toxic culture as a whole, “it paints a pretty bleak picture of what it looks like to be a womxn or a marginalised gender in a public place.”
However, it is not all doom and gloom (I promise). In cheer up luv, Eliza proactively tries to turn negative experiences into something positive. For the survivor who is reclaiming their story, but also for “the person on the other side trying to engage in that topic, maybe for the first time. And show them that it is an accessible thing that we can talk about, it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.”
“It is an accessible thing that we can talk about, it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom.”
This is something that strikes me about Eliza, even though she is working within such a difficult and heavy subject, she continually uses art as a means to locate joy and positivity within it. Ultimately, she uses joy as a tool to uplift survivors, raise awareness, and encourage new audiences to join a conversation that we as a society, need to be having. Cheer up luv has branched into a podcast, exhibitions, collaborations, and workshops too. From audiences of school kids to corporate lawyers, Eliza is taking this powerful photojournalist series into a range of different environments in order to tackle the problem of public harassment, head on. When I ask what she would like to do next, she replies that her next ambition is to create a cheer up luv series incorporating her new favourite hobby, skateboarding.
Eliza Hatch is an artist who refuses to stand still, and it is thanks to projects like cheer up luv, that awareness of sexism and public harassment is greater than ever. She truly is a trailblazer.
Tori, 2018
About Eliza Hatch
Eliza Hatch is a 28-year-old photographer, activist, speaker and one half of the curatorial duo behind Hysterical Collective. In 2017 Eliza founded Cheer Up Luv, a photo series dedicated to retelling accounts of street harassment. Eliza Hatch founded the campaign after being told to "cheer up" by a stranger in the street. After her male friends dismissed the experience as a “compliment", Eliza felt inspired to prove them wrong. She realised that not only was the issue completely normalised, but there was a huge lack of awareness surrounding it.
Eliza began taking portraits of her friends in public places and posting the photos online. With each location reflecting the testimony of harassment, the effect was empowering survivors by turning a negative memory into something positive.
Eliza's work branches into workshops, exhibitions, lectures and has led her to working with global organisations, such as The United Nations, Apple and TEDx. The Cheer Up Luv series has been featured by The BBC, The Guardian, i-D, Dazed to name a few, and in 2019 won the Webby for Best Individual Editorial Feature with 'Don't Look Away', a joint campaign with the UNFPA. Eliza has been invited to speak at Nicer Tuesdays, Today At Apple, TEDx, The University of Cambridge, Kings College, Forbes Ignite, Girl Rising, UN Women and is a part-time tutor at the University of Falmouth teaching Visual Communication.