TORONTO – As more and more women don face masks in an attempt to protect themselves and others from the novel coronavirus, catcallers across the city are finding themselves growing increasingly frustrated with their inability to tell whether they need to tell the women to smile or not. However, particularly thorough catcaller Mark Jameson recently made the decision to tell every woman to smile whether or not he can see her face.
“I figure there’s a 50/50 chance she’s already smiling under that thing,” he said, standing on his favourite catcalling corner. “But I just thought, who knows? I’ll hedge my bets and yell ‘Gimme a smile!’ at her regardless. That way, she’ll either smile bigger than she already was, or I’ll really turn her day around by alerting her to the fact that she wasn’t looking her happiest during a worldwide health crisis.”
Mask-wearer Andrea Moretz was in line at the LCBO when Jameson accosted her earlier today, and explained that she found the experience more puzzling than annoying.
“I was already smiling because the line was super short,” she said, uncorking her second bottle of chardonnay of the day. “So I don’t know what he expected. I yelled at him to fuck off, but he seemed to take it as a compliment, because he replied that my sweatpants looked ‘really sexy today.’”
When asked whether or not he gets the same pleasure from telling women to smile when they are wearing masks as he did before COVID-19 hit, Jameson appeared admirably optimistic about the new challenge.
“It’s been difficult for me, I can’t lie. The rush I get from the grateful look on a female’s face when I whisper ‘You’d look prettier if you smiled’ at her from across the bus stop just isn’t there anymore. But even if I can’t see the smiles right now, I know they’re there, and that’s what matters. I have to be vigilant. For myself, yes, but more importantly, for them, and the men forced to look at them.”
Jameson was last seen telling a nurse in a full hazmat suit that she would look better with less makeup on.
