The crowd and the lights at a Robbie Williams concert over the weekend. Photo / Paul Taylor
The crowd and the lights at a Robbie Williams concert over the weekend. Photo / Paul Taylor
OPINION
Touching a teenage girl’s behind without consent is wrong on so many levels.
In this day and age, everyone knows this sort of behaviour is unacceptable. There is no time and no place where it is acceptable. There never has been.
Being tipsy or drunk is no excuse. Andwhat I love is that today’s young people aren’t afraid to speak up.
I’ve heard all manner of reactions to the weekend’s two Mission Concerts, from ”amazing” and “best show ever” to “he talked too much” and “it took so long to get out of the venue”.
One 16-year-old girl I know went to the concert with her friend. The mother of the girl trusts her daughter — she’s sensible.
And sure enough, she loved the concert, but she told her mother after: “I’ve never had my behind grabbed and touched so much.”
It happened at the squeeze after the show, when the girls were leaving the venue and people were packed together.
At one stage there was so much touching, the 16-year-old rounded on the man, yelling at him. He quickly apologised and walked off.
While I was discussing this, outrage simmering in me, another young woman I know who is 23 said it’s something that happens at all concerts. How depressing.
She then detailed her experience with a drunk man who had tried to rip her swimwear off. Luckily for her, she was with a group of people who told the person where to go in no uncertain terms.
Back to the Mission incidents.
The teen stayed at her friend’s place the night, so the next morning when she arrived home her mother asked, “So, how was it?”
Her reply: “Pretty scary, really, seeing all the older drunk people falling down and struggling to get up and down the hill.”
Perhaps a teenager's reaction to being touched while leaving the Mission Concert is the solution to stopping concert gropers.
This isn’t new. At a rain-soaked Phil Collins show, there were broken ankles all over the place.
I actually have no real problem with that. If you want to go to the Mission and get drunk, the potential for a hillside disaster is on you.
I may have done that myself in years gone by, and I might even do it again.
Young people go to nightclubs and drink; older people go to the Mission and drink.
But as I said, being drunk is no excuse to touch. We need to make sure people feel ashamed about it.
So what this teenager did might just be the solution to inappropriate touching at crowded concerts under the cover of darkness: turn and yell right in their face so everyone around them knows what they have been up to. Do not put up with it.
Have a go at a ”toucher”. Hopefully, that person will remember and never do it again.
The weekend was such a success for Hawke’s Bay, with thousands of people hitting restaurants, cafes and shops.
It is exactly what we needed, and I don’t want the actions of a few to distract from that, but I think this subject needs to be discussed.
Luckily, this teen has a mother she can talk to.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall if her mother or father had been with her. Oh, hang on. It wouldn’t have happened then.
The gropers might have been drunk, but they know how to pick their victims. Men, be better.
Linda Hall is a Hastings-based assistant editor for Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 30 years of experience in newsrooms. She writes regularly on arts and entertainment, lifestyle and hospitality, and pens a column.
