Sexual harassment is a complex workplace phenomenon that engenders significant economic costs to organizations. In this article, we draw on a qualitative study conducted with display workers—namely, male models—to answer the question: How do workers distinguish between wanted and unwanted acts of sexual interest? Our findings illuminate the subjective nature of sexual harassment based on the male perspective, which has yet to be unpacked in the extant literature in any meaningful way. This study posits the critical role of the target’s perception of perpetrator attractiveness in delineating the boundary conditions between labeling an act of sexual interest as wanted or unwanted—or, stated alternatively, whether an act constitutes harassment or not. It reveals how a target’s perception of perpetrator attractiveness confounds the traditional demarcations that separate sexual harassment and sexual consent. Within this purview, sexual harassment becomes a highly nuanced, complicated, and muddy workplace reality. It makes it untenable to assert that this act is objectively representative of sexual harassment, while that act is not. Indeed, this study demonstrates the pressing need for academics, policy-makers, and practitioners to engage with, problematize, and revise how sexual harassment at work is defined and regulated.
