“Things To Know To Stay Safe That Maybe No One Ever Told You”: 24 Tips For Women From This Creator
It goes without saying that safety and security can’t be overstated. Especially these days.
Just consider this: if the internet is breaking at the seams with women speaking about the ways they stay safe and deal with stalking, harassment, and other forms of abuse against women, then you know you have a problem. A prevalent one at that.
A lifestyle TikToker recently went viral with a handful of her safety and security tips after sharing how you have to be “consistently inconsistent” in order to stay safe out there.
Image credits: amazedbykayy
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When you get home, don't turn on the lights, especially if you live in an apartment building. Because if someone did follow you home and they quietly parked and waited to see outside the building what bedroom window they see a light turn on, they now know where you live. I was always told to refrain and create a solution right away for that. When you leave the house, you always leave a light on in your apartment at all times, or the porch light, the backlight. And that light bill is worth your safety every time. At least you have some type of peace of mind, and hopefully, it saves you.
Pay attention when you're leaving places, your rearview mirror, who's following you. Pay attention to the cars parked around you before you even get out of the car to go in the store. These are the type of mindsets and tactics and awareness that the type of people that are looking to harm single women, or women in general, they are not going to target you because you're too hip to things be super consistent with being inconsistent.
Become a better steward of your vehicle. A lot of women are taught to just like utilize the car for what it's good for. But in reality, it really keeps you safe to its best ability. It gets you from A to Z in scary moments when you want to leave. And the way that you can do that is by making sure that you don't let any of your vehicle functions get down to the nitty gritty of wear and tear. So always make sure that you're paying attention to your tire levels. Always make sure you're on top of your oil changes. That is one of the simplest things you can do. Wear and tear on your car in moments of emergency and staying safe is just so unfortunate. So do a better job in loving your cars like men love their cars.
It blows my mind how many people don't know how to "jump" a car that won't start, change the oil or even add the fluids your car needs. I get it if you've got a brand new car & have all that taken care of, but you should still know. Example: an easily missed leak in your brake lines will eventually mean NO BRAKE FLUID which means NO BRAKES. I even know men that don't know how to check or do the basics. Triple A isn't always just a phone call away(cell phone service isn't always reliable either). TL DR: All I'm saying is better to have it(the knowledge) and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Kaylen Zahara, known as @amazedbykayy on TikTok, is a lifestyle and beauty personality who has recently been going viral for a video of hers.
Among other things, she discussed the need to be “consistently inconsistent”. By that, she meant that you can’t have a daily routine—a publicly visible one, at least—because that might help potential trouble-makers make some trouble to your disadvantage.
When traveling be very wary with telling employees on the property of the resort where you're at, what room you're staying in. There are employees that work for crime organizations to traffic, kidnap, don't do it.
Change the setting of your car keys. When you go into your car, if you have a newer car, it'll say the option of when you press to click your car button, do you want all the doors to unlock, or just the driver door, choose just the driver door because if you're running from someone, trying to get away from someone, if it unlocks all the doors, all they have to do is go to the passenger back door while you just jumped in the passenger and now they're in the car with you.
Always make sure that you have enough gas in your tank for your car at night specifically. You never know what could happen. You could be driving home from your parents' house. And you notice you've got a quarter a tank. What happens when you realize your car's gonna run out of gas? If they're continuously following you, and they're making every move, and they're letting you know, yes, we're following you. What are you going to do? Because when you stop what happens? Always make sure you have gas in your car.
Kaylen explains that the idea behind being consistently inconsistent is being unpredictable. One of the key things that criminals, human traffickers and similar rabble look for in a victim is patterns. They might study your route to work, to the store and the like, and they could construct their plan of attack based on that. Kaylen suggests getting ahead of things and making sure they can’t plan.
Always do your best to get receipts because there are some establishments that have managers and employees who like to rob their customers. You pay for something $12, and they go 'You want your receipt?' and you say no, and you'll never know that your card was charged $40 because they know every day that their cash register always ends up being short. And that's how they're saving the difference. Or they're just flat out robbing everybody that says no to a receipt.
Unless they are double charging you, which they can do after you leave, the number on the register/till/handheld apple scanner etc is the number that goes through. I've never been anywhere that doesn't display the total. If you don't see a total, that's very suspicious.
Whenever you have a maintenance person coming, or a general contractor to work on your home, always make sure that you have men's work boots at the front door, leave out boxers and clothing all over your home or your property, so they see it and they clock in their head, 'I don't know if she's pretending but I'm not going to risk it, leave it alone'.
Refrain from putting very personalized bumper stickers on your vehicles that would make it obvious about where you go to school, what you're into, what gym you go to, all of those different things make you trackable.
When living alone as a woman, probably not the best idea when you're in a large apartment complex, or even a small one, to put a doormat outside your door anything that's cutesy and girly, even if it's neutral or not girly, because it allows people who are in the industry of kidnapping people and doing crimes to know there's a woman that lives there. Yeah, that one sucks.
I'm a woman who's lucky enough to not have to deal with housemates. My house has a big bay window facing onto the street. There's a piano pushed into the bay; standing on the piano are 3 foot-tall Star Wars figures (Vader, Chewie, a Stormie). They look epic (and that's their primary purpose) but they also don't scream 'single female living alone'.
So, go to different stores every time you need to, and go at different times; go do errands in erratic ways; plan meetings all the same, and make sure you’re never alone. Don’t slack on going the extra mile to do this, it’s all for your safety. The less structure your daily life has, the better as it throws off potential predators. And most of them will back off once they see how difficult you are.
When you're doing valet, make sure that you're taking your car key off of the little ring that you have for all other keys. Do not underestimate. You should not underestimate that there's someone behind that venue in a big old van that has a key copier, they take down all your information, your place, etc. And then before you know it, weeks later, you're robbed.
Sign in front of a plush restaurant. "If you use valet parking, be sure to remember what your valet looks like. Because we don't have valet parking."
If you have a camera in your home, make sure to remember that while you're in your home, it's either turned off, facing the wall, there's no audio on it because there are such things as people that can hack into Wi-Fi just for sh**s and giggles. And people do this like they go to school or watch cartoons. And they just watch and listen to people all the time through their cameras while you're at home.
I'm so boring they'd get tired of watching my fat face. All I do is play PS5 and eat Cheetos.
Handy dandy pepper spray, keep it in the car, viewable, not viewable that's up to you. Sometimes, I think it's best to make it viewable and accessible. So you don't forget that you always have it on you.
Obviously, don't do this if you live somewhere where it's illegal to have pepper spray ...
When it comes to Uber, Lyft, eat deliveries, all that good stuff, don't put your personal information, don't add a photo of yourself, don't put your real name, don't put your apartment unit. Believe it or not, a lot of crazy people on a really low level, not like legitimate organized crime, get into those types of jobs, just to be weirdos, just to be creeps, stalkers, etc.
By leaving off your unit number, you're saying it's safer to... meet the driver than have them drop off a contactless delivery? The rest of it I can understand to an extent, but I don't understand how leaving off a key part of the delivery address where you can avoid the driver is somehow safer than the driver then having to meet you somewhere.
When you are walking on the street, always make sure that you are walking against traffic. Meaning you see all the cars coming toward you, not from behind you. Why? Because if you're walking with traffic, a car can pull up to the side of you or behind you, and snatch you. We see that all the time in movies.
But that’s not all. Kaylen has several videos talking about safety. Try to avoid personality on food delivery apps—don’t have any more personal info than it is necessary for the couriers to do their job.
If you have cameras at home, then make sure they are facing away or turned off whenever you’re at home as hackers can hijack them.
If you go to a certain school, work at a certain hospital, etc. Probably not the brightest idea to leave your little information tag in your car dashboard area, and drive around the city and everywhere else and not take it out. Because all that tells somebody is where you go every day, how to find you next after you leave the grocery store. It's not smart.
Sometimes it's a sticker, not a little card. You can't very well remove a sticker.
When you get new tags on your car. Make sure that you are scraping through it with a knife or your key to make sure that no one can simply just pull it off.
I don't understand this one. What is a tag on a car? How would scraping a knife through it stop someone pulling it off?
It is important for us as young women to get comfortable with the idea and mindset of being consistently inconsistent with where we run our errands, what we do and how we're doing it. For example, the people that are out here with ill intentions to profit off are looking for specific targets: the oblivious, the ones that don't have awareness and the people that don't have these type of mindsets. You need to be going to different coffee shops all the time, don't go to Target because it's right there at your home and it's just consistent. Do different things, spread it out, drive extra miles to go run your errands, and then next week don't go there anymore, then go to the place that is closest to you, switch it up so much.
Be aware of your surroundings, don't fall into a routine in case of stalkers, tell someone where you are, don't walk alone, lace your keys in between your fingers like a B-rated Wolverine... all sh*t I and probably most women have been told since we started developing. All great advice, but I'm f**king sick of the conversation on how to "stay safe" being a woman in the world is what we women can do to limit being harrased and maybe thwart off an attack.
Stop going to the gym every day at five o'clock at your favorite one on Third and Fifth Street. You are completely exposing yourself to a routine, and timeline, and they can just start tracking you, they know your whole routine, you're an easy target to be robbed, trafficked, all this other stuff. So just start thinking outside the box.
Be aware of your surroundings, don't fall into a routine in case of stalkers, tell someone where you are, don't walk alone, lace your keys in between your fingers like a B-rated Wolverine... all sh*t I and probably most women have been told since we started developing. All great advice, but I'm f**king sick of the conversation on how to "stay safe" being a woman in the world is what we women can do to limit being harrased and maybe thwart off an attack.
When you travel, especially as a woman, you need to book and state that there's a man's name on the reservation. And when you get into that room, you need to make sure that you check everything. Make sure nobody's hiding in cubbies and closets, and always bring a door stopper that has an alarm on it. So if someone does break in as soon as they open that door and alarm that is going to wake up the entire globe is going to be set off.
She also suggests more unorthodox things mixed with standard security measures. Say you have an alarm at home. Trigger it every once in a while—not only will you be testing it out, but you will also be sending a message to everyone about it as a regular drill. It can be annoying, and some might get desensitized to it, but people will be aware of the deterring measures.
Living in an apartment complex, do certain things that throw people off. Get alarm systems, anytime you open your front door let that ring hell loud. So that everybody on your floor knows 'try it if you want to'. Because unfortunately yes, people live there day in and day out to plot to harm others.
Never go to a carwash in the evening or at night. The ones at the gas station that you drive through. Somebody could be in between the sides of where your car's going through really slow getting washed. And they could carjack you, anything could happen.
Stop talking to strangers. Stranger danger. There are people that are recruited as like employees for the trafficking world. And a lot of them are recruited as women because they come off as unsuspecting. And they talk to you while you're in Target shopping for tissue paper. When you get approached by somebody in an instance where you didn't ask them to tell you 'Oh my god, your hair's so pretty. What do you put on it?' Just be like bye, and move away from the aisle.
Blimey, they’ve never visited the north of England then. Having a (usually) brief conversation with strangers is pretty standard!
I think it's really unsafe for women and children to be riding around in non-tinted windows where anybody can visibly see them, aka fishbowl.
It is important to note that while much of the content online doesn’t aim to fear-monger people into a sense of paranoia about the dangers of the outside world, the sheer amount of it doesn’t help. Not everyone and everything is out to get you and the risks are generally low.
For the record, things like homocides are generally speaking on the decline. The pandemic didn't help, but depending on the policies, some places bounced faster than others and, by this point, many bounced back in general.
But like with any extreme, it’s best to find the optimal level of awareness for the sake of safety because you’ll be better off in the long run.
So, what are your thoughts on any of this? Have some safety tips that proved to be quite effective? Share your advice, takes and stories in the comment section below!
You can check out the video that sparked it all below
@amazedbykayy Just some everyday safety sense from a california girl — add to the list for others in comments
♬ original sound - Kaylen Zahara
Here is how the internet reacted to the video
What a load of fear mongering s... I think even BP has forgotten that most of their users don't live in the US.
I agree....I am a scaredy cat living in a not so safe city but wouldn't implement half of what's written. That seems a bit too much. Like I should stop buying my baguette every morning at 7:45 in case someone might kidnap me ^^ ?
Load More Replies...
The paranoia is strong with this one. How exhausting it must be to think everyone is out to get you.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had this one. Just like the other times, when you have this mindset, you either need to move away from the shithole country you’re living in and/or reach for a psychiatrist to treat your paranoia. Or both.
What a load of fear mongering s... I think even BP has forgotten that most of their users don't live in the US.
I agree....I am a scaredy cat living in a not so safe city but wouldn't implement half of what's written. That seems a bit too much. Like I should stop buying my baguette every morning at 7:45 in case someone might kidnap me ^^ ?
Load More Replies... The paranoia is strong with this one. How exhausting it must be to think everyone is out to get you.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had this one. Just like the other times, when you have this mindset, you either need to move away from the shithole country you’re living in and/or reach for a psychiatrist to treat your paranoia. Or both.
