Fight or Flight

Just because a woman dresses nice”—I gestured to myself—“doesn’t mean she’s advertising that she’s looking for a guy to take notice.”
“No, you’re right. It doesn’t. But it would be naive tae think that some men dinnae still think that it does.”
“Oh, I know that. But I refuse to let misogyny and sexism and sexually aggressive a-holes dictate what I put on my body and how I do my makeup or my hair.”

We were just different people, and just because you didn’t agree with someone on everything didn’t mean he was a bad person.

So was I a bitch? Or was I fully in my rights to feel defensive and wronged when men treated me like prey?
Yes, I was absolutely within my rights.

There was this obnoxious misconception that women only dressed well to attract a mate. Hello! Some of us were just obsessed with clothes, shoes, and makeup and liked to look good, you know, for ourselves. Shocker.

Doing my makeup, slicking red matte lipstick across my full lips, putting on three coats of mascara that made my big jade green eyes pop, using my curling iron to create loose waves in my long blond hair, pairing my black dress with black stilettos and their signature red soles—all of it was for me. It was me saying, Screw all of you. My physical appearance was just a small fraction of who I was. I was more than a pretty bauble to hang on the tree of a man’s world.

I liked to think I was someone who was usually cool and collected, but lately my emotions were so close to the surface I was almost afraid of them.