Sexism: the ugly and the beautiful
One of the ugliest faces of sexism is how men think they own beautiful women and that beautiful women exist only for their pleasure. I've seen many instances of this, for example, when men feel entitled to insult or be aggressive if a beautiful woman does not preserve and present her beauty as they think she should.
I have a lot of white hair for my age and the first strands of white started to appear on my head when I was only a teenager. This is not as unusual as you might think, the reason why most people believe that men start to grow grey earlier than women is because women who are grey from a young age always dye their hair. Think Clooney and Gere are sexy, but can't name an actress, model or any female public figure who is grey and not truly old? Now you know why.
I also have a funny story about why I started dying my hair in my early twenties. On a sunny day, I was insulted on account of my grey hair and ordered to dye it by a very aggressive, angry random man in the street. I had heard some nasty comments before, but I'd ignore them until I felt physically threatened and got scared of continuing to use my natural colour. Crazy right?!
The craziest thing is that I also had a couple of friends which had even more white than me and they never had a problem. They were surprised by my experience, but I wasn't by theirs, because I'd seen it many times before. Men don't care about ugly women [I use ugly quite factually, not as an insult, you should translate it to women a man finds completely unattractive]. If a woman is ugly, she gets less insults from men (contrary to logic and common belief), she never gets told (much less ordered) how to present herself or how to behave. She mostly gets left alone to be and do as she pleases. An ugly woman is not property of man, because she is not desired.
My white hair example is quite frivolous, I agree. Still every time I dye my hair (a process that I hate, if not for any other reason, because the chemicals ruin my scalp and hair), I'm reminded of why I do it: fear. This is only one instance of the fear that is ever present on a woman's life. I remember when I was young, I had a couple of friends who were not harassed in the street by men. How I envied them! How deceivingly safe the streets were for these women who could walk them freely without being constantly reminded of what men wished to do to them.
Have you ever noticed how very young women suffer a lot more harassment than relatively older ones? If you haven't I'll tell you how I know this. I have the great disadvantage of looking a lot younger than I am, so I was heavily harassed for a lot longer than most women. The harassment decreased exponentially when strangers started guessing that I was in my early twenties (by then I was already in my thirties). Most women probably never notice this because for them this period only lasts a few years. I was a lot (and I mean A LOT) more harassed when I looked like I was under the age of consent than after I stopped looking so. So I'm anything but surprised when some police investigation uncovers that paedophilia (in the legal sense) is so pervasive. I'm thinking about the Saville case and related ones here in the UK.
The problem is that to be completely unattractive from the average man's point of view, a woman must be... well, really ugly. Think of fat shaming, for example, it occurs only because a fat woman is perceived as potentially beautiful if she loses weight, thus she is not ugly enough. The other side of this coin is that really ugly women are occasionally treated as having no right to exist. After all, if they're not even mildly attractive what could possible be their use in the grand scheme of things? Like cockroaches and other pests, men would just prefer these women wouldn't exist. They're nothing but a waste of resources, like the precious air they breathe. If you've had this experience, do not believe them ever. I know this can be difficult, but remember, you're not really ugly until you lose your sense of self-worth. I have the proof of this, a good friend of mine, who happens to be the only woman I know that as never (not even once) been harassed in the street, is married to a very handsome man and HE thinks she's beautiful. And she is, in a unconventional way, her inner beauty (which is the only one that really matters) shines through to those who are not blinded by stupidity. And you must be really blind not to see it, because in her particular case it shines much brighter than average.
Sexism of this type can destroy lives, and if I didn't think this post is already grim and depressing enough I'd go into more detail on this subject. My advice is to try to stay positive, even if the world gives you many reasons to believe you must be completely deluded to do so.
I have a lot of white hair for my age and the first strands of white started to appear on my head when I was only a teenager. This is not as unusual as you might think, the reason why most people believe that men start to grow grey earlier than women is because women who are grey from a young age always dye their hair. Think Clooney and Gere are sexy, but can't name an actress, model or any female public figure who is grey and not truly old? Now you know why.
I also have a funny story about why I started dying my hair in my early twenties. On a sunny day, I was insulted on account of my grey hair and ordered to dye it by a very aggressive, angry random man in the street. I had heard some nasty comments before, but I'd ignore them until I felt physically threatened and got scared of continuing to use my natural colour. Crazy right?!
The craziest thing is that I also had a couple of friends which had even more white than me and they never had a problem. They were surprised by my experience, but I wasn't by theirs, because I'd seen it many times before. Men don't care about ugly women [I use ugly quite factually, not as an insult, you should translate it to women a man finds completely unattractive]. If a woman is ugly, she gets less insults from men (contrary to logic and common belief), she never gets told (much less ordered) how to present herself or how to behave. She mostly gets left alone to be and do as she pleases. An ugly woman is not property of man, because she is not desired.
My white hair example is quite frivolous, I agree. Still every time I dye my hair (a process that I hate, if not for any other reason, because the chemicals ruin my scalp and hair), I'm reminded of why I do it: fear. This is only one instance of the fear that is ever present on a woman's life. I remember when I was young, I had a couple of friends who were not harassed in the street by men. How I envied them! How deceivingly safe the streets were for these women who could walk them freely without being constantly reminded of what men wished to do to them.
Have you ever noticed how very young women suffer a lot more harassment than relatively older ones? If you haven't I'll tell you how I know this. I have the great disadvantage of looking a lot younger than I am, so I was heavily harassed for a lot longer than most women. The harassment decreased exponentially when strangers started guessing that I was in my early twenties (by then I was already in my thirties). Most women probably never notice this because for them this period only lasts a few years. I was a lot (and I mean A LOT) more harassed when I looked like I was under the age of consent than after I stopped looking so. So I'm anything but surprised when some police investigation uncovers that paedophilia (in the legal sense) is so pervasive. I'm thinking about the Saville case and related ones here in the UK.
The problem is that to be completely unattractive from the average man's point of view, a woman must be... well, really ugly. Think of fat shaming, for example, it occurs only because a fat woman is perceived as potentially beautiful if she loses weight, thus she is not ugly enough. The other side of this coin is that really ugly women are occasionally treated as having no right to exist. After all, if they're not even mildly attractive what could possible be their use in the grand scheme of things? Like cockroaches and other pests, men would just prefer these women wouldn't exist. They're nothing but a waste of resources, like the precious air they breathe. If you've had this experience, do not believe them ever. I know this can be difficult, but remember, you're not really ugly until you lose your sense of self-worth. I have the proof of this, a good friend of mine, who happens to be the only woman I know that as never (not even once) been harassed in the street, is married to a very handsome man and HE thinks she's beautiful. And she is, in a unconventional way, her inner beauty (which is the only one that really matters) shines through to those who are not blinded by stupidity. And you must be really blind not to see it, because in her particular case it shines much brighter than average.
Sexism of this type can destroy lives, and if I didn't think this post is already grim and depressing enough I'd go into more detail on this subject. My advice is to try to stay positive, even if the world gives you many reasons to believe you must be completely deluded to do so.
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