“I would put on makeup while watching TV, and wash it before going outside.”
This broke my heart. But this….
It was the men who claimed to love women. Fuck you. You cost me so much. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.
…broke it even worse. Because I think you’ve picked the wrong target. (Actually, I don’t even think there IS a target.)
(A little background….I didn’t start dressing in Islamic clothing until my mid-30’s. And I’m a half-breed; I look more Irish than I do Arabic.)
What *I* heard from this is that you’re wonderfully complicated……and have struggled to manage that complication. You’re obviously brilliant…….and I’m guessing that Revlon and Maybelline do not view MIT women as a hot market for their products.
At any rate, I struggled with understanding exactly what you were frustrated with (I mean, I’ve always considered it kind of par for the course, if you take a little sh**t from some men when you try to look nice), so I asked my husband to read through for his thoughts.
He started with “well, it’s not men’s fault that she stopped wearing pink” :-) and then moved on to ask ME “do women really not want to be noticed, considering they put so much effort in looking nice?” (I didn’t have an answer for that one. I always like to get compliments on the way I look, even though I’m far from young these days.)
And then, he said “well, she sounds like a perfect woman, but for some reason, that makes her mad.” Another query on what he meant by that was answered with “well, she’s smart and she’s feminine. Women that are both are in the minority.”
Hmph. We ended the conversation still confused.
Quite frankly, I think you’re overthinking the situation. Sometimes a blazing intellect messes us up, when we turn it loose on self-reflection.
And I’m sort of confused as to why I never went through this sort of — well, what you call “abuse” — — in my teens and 20’s. I met jerks, of course, but I didn’t let them bother me, and I certainly wasn’t going to let them dictate what I wore to me.
Sorry it’s been hard for you.
