The c-word and How I Want To Be Treated
I'm gonna write a short essay about something that's bugged me for a while re: my appearance - I'm really tired of men talking to me like I'm "little" and "cute" and that that's supposed to be okay.
What I mean is this: I'm 23, I've lived a life containing many things, including real love, hard work, disappointment, triumph, and a couple of genuine tragedies that have all given me the wisdom and endurance to meet life as an adult. None of this is apparent in my appearance, which is one of the reasons I (tangent here) really like meeting and talking to strangers. You can never know what sort of life someone has lived just by looking at their face, but a ten-minute conversation can open you up to years of story that you never would have guessed based on appearance. I just love this about people.
I, for all my legal adulthood, look like a 16 year old. I generally don't mind this very much because it means I'll look younger longer, which is a plus in the long run, and I am a pretty farsighted person. However, in the present, it means that I get hit, mostly by men, with my least favorite c-word.
That's right. Cute.
(I know that wasn't the c-word you were thinking of. Sorry.)
The point is, I look young. Without some significant efforts to dress myself up to maturity, I'm pretty in a youthful she'll-grow-into-her-looks kind of way. And this is appealing to a lot of guys who, as far as I can tell, just don't want to take me seriously.
It isn't always overt, like the anecdotes I'm going to relate, but this happens more than I'd like. I'll be explicit right now for the sake of brevity: there's a guy in town who I go to church with, who's definitely a good person in many ways, but I'm just increasingly uncharmed by the way he talks to me.
Like when I posted to my facebook that evillittletwit had helped me buy shoes for the winter (I said shoes, meaning boots) - his response was something along the lines of "Shoes, for winter. That's cute."
Which just says to me, "you don't know how the world works, and I think that's just ADORABLE in a naive, childlike sort of way."
Which is not how I like to be talked to, and basically why I hate the c-word as it's applied to me. Because "cute" when it's applied to a young woman who looks younger than she is (and, I'll be honest, acts younger, although I've been working on toning that down), is demeaning - and particularly when that young woman is doing the things I am doing, trying to be taken seriously in the world.
And right now: that same person responded to my facebook query as to whether or not I was a winter badass yet for changing my license plate in 6-degree weather (he was the one who said I was only one if I did it in a tank top and flip flops). A few more friends followed up insisting that yes, I WAS a badass, so I reveled in their support via a comment.
His response was: Yes, but are ___ and___ Floridians? They can have your back all you want, but if they've never experienced an Iowa winter (this is still Autumn btw), then I'm not as impressed with their support :P
I'm hugely offended by this. By someone saying "I'm not impressed that your other friends say positive things about you and think well of you for challenging yourself by moving to a very different climate from the one you've known your whole life." Which boils down to "Other people are supporting you, but I'm not impressed."
(Disclaimer: I'm sure this is not what he meant. But this, I think, is why people ought to choose their words very carefully when speaking to each other, particularly over the internet, where everything is recorded for posterity.)
I may very well post the following to facebook if he continues to be demeaning: Listen here mister, I moved more than a thousand miles away from everyone I know and every climate I am familiar with, to live alone for the first time, to have my car break down in new towns for the first time, to see my family a grand total of 12 days out of that time, doing living-wage work for poverty-level wages in support of a community I've never been to, with snow and ice and freezing rain and weather extremes I have never seen before, and I have already been facing every one of these challenges for nearly five months, with seven more to go. If you don't recognize that I am brave and adventurous and determined and a motherfucking badass, then you're a fool, and I pity you for not recognizing how amazing I am."
This relationship is probably going to turn into another case of "you're a good person, but not good for me." This, I'm learning, is just a thing that happens.
I would like, very much, to meet someone, and be treated as a person with 23 years of experience, which is not an insignificant amount, and during which time an unimaginable plethora of things can happen to shape a person. Women usually do this, and I am hugely appreciative of every man around my age I meet who treats me this way, if only because I run fairly regularly into ones who don't.
What I mean is this: I'm 23, I've lived a life containing many things, including real love, hard work, disappointment, triumph, and a couple of genuine tragedies that have all given me the wisdom and endurance to meet life as an adult. None of this is apparent in my appearance, which is one of the reasons I (tangent here) really like meeting and talking to strangers. You can never know what sort of life someone has lived just by looking at their face, but a ten-minute conversation can open you up to years of story that you never would have guessed based on appearance. I just love this about people.
I, for all my legal adulthood, look like a 16 year old. I generally don't mind this very much because it means I'll look younger longer, which is a plus in the long run, and I am a pretty farsighted person. However, in the present, it means that I get hit, mostly by men, with my least favorite c-word.
That's right. Cute.
(I know that wasn't the c-word you were thinking of. Sorry.)
The point is, I look young. Without some significant efforts to dress myself up to maturity, I'm pretty in a youthful she'll-grow-into-her-looks kind of way. And this is appealing to a lot of guys who, as far as I can tell, just don't want to take me seriously.
It isn't always overt, like the anecdotes I'm going to relate, but this happens more than I'd like. I'll be explicit right now for the sake of brevity: there's a guy in town who I go to church with, who's definitely a good person in many ways, but I'm just increasingly uncharmed by the way he talks to me.
Like when I posted to my facebook that evillittletwit had helped me buy shoes for the winter (I said shoes, meaning boots) - his response was something along the lines of "Shoes, for winter. That's cute."
Which just says to me, "you don't know how the world works, and I think that's just ADORABLE in a naive, childlike sort of way."
Which is not how I like to be talked to, and basically why I hate the c-word as it's applied to me. Because "cute" when it's applied to a young woman who looks younger than she is (and, I'll be honest, acts younger, although I've been working on toning that down), is demeaning - and particularly when that young woman is doing the things I am doing, trying to be taken seriously in the world.
And right now: that same person responded to my facebook query as to whether or not I was a winter badass yet for changing my license plate in 6-degree weather (he was the one who said I was only one if I did it in a tank top and flip flops). A few more friends followed up insisting that yes, I WAS a badass, so I reveled in their support via a comment.
His response was: Yes, but are ___ and___ Floridians? They can have your back all you want, but if they've never experienced an Iowa winter (this is still Autumn btw), then I'm not as impressed with their support :P
I'm hugely offended by this. By someone saying "I'm not impressed that your other friends say positive things about you and think well of you for challenging yourself by moving to a very different climate from the one you've known your whole life." Which boils down to "Other people are supporting you, but I'm not impressed."
(Disclaimer: I'm sure this is not what he meant. But this, I think, is why people ought to choose their words very carefully when speaking to each other, particularly over the internet, where everything is recorded for posterity.)
I may very well post the following to facebook if he continues to be demeaning: Listen here mister, I moved more than a thousand miles away from everyone I know and every climate I am familiar with, to live alone for the first time, to have my car break down in new towns for the first time, to see my family a grand total of 12 days out of that time, doing living-wage work for poverty-level wages in support of a community I've never been to, with snow and ice and freezing rain and weather extremes I have never seen before, and I have already been facing every one of these challenges for nearly five months, with seven more to go. If you don't recognize that I am brave and adventurous and determined and a motherfucking badass, then you're a fool, and I pity you for not recognizing how amazing I am."
This relationship is probably going to turn into another case of "you're a good person, but not good for me." This, I'm learning, is just a thing that happens.
I would like, very much, to meet someone, and be treated as a person with 23 years of experience, which is not an insignificant amount, and during which time an unimaginable plethora of things can happen to shape a person. Women usually do this, and I am hugely appreciative of every man around my age I meet who treats me this way, if only because I run fairly regularly into ones who don't.