I simply don’t think it is a cultural thing in the USA. When I was 13 we might verbally ogle a girl, but that stopped really quick when you realized that not only was it not going to help you meet her, it made you look like a dipstick.
That, and your friends saying “Will you shut up? You make us look like idiots!”
I did not know one single guy after being a pubescent teenager who even did anything at all like that, and that includes four years in the Navy with a lot of guys who were prone to alcohol abuse and the prospective charms of female companionship.
That isn’t to say guys won’t ogle a woman visually, but most grown Americans aren’t going to stick out their tongue, whistle, or say “Hubba hubba” except maybe to each other when the woman is gone.
These people are deranged.
Now, when my family went to Italy back in the early seventies, my mother was dressed all in black with her Jackie O sunglasses and had us six kids in tow, and there were a lot of Italian men who were making a lot of sounds and gestures as she walked by. (My dad was at the Embassy trying to get a space-available flight for us back to the USA on the Military Airlift Command, but it was an impossible task)
Someone told her that being unaccompanied, wearing black and having lots of kids in tow meant something very specific to Italian men...
Thanks for your post, which makes sense and made me laugh, especially the line, “These people are deranged.” I also got a kick out of the visual of your mother with six children in tow being whistled at. She may have been flattered!