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((I normally would write this in my journal, but I wanted write these words "aloud." This is a very personal exercise, and I wanted to share to a larger audience my experiences and concerns. Maybe you can share some of your own in response? Writer.))
Hello. My name is Writer. I am 31 years-old. I am 5'8", don long brown hair which I highlight, get regular manicures, and attempt to dress well. My hobby is writing, although it's been difficult as of late. I can't seem to concentrate, and from what I figure, I won't be able to concentrate for a while because something has been on my mind.
I grew up in a wealthy section of Dallas which, given that my mother and I had little ourselves, proved to be a social challenge. I attended school with young ladies who grew to be actresses and models, and young men who grew to be lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs. I felt like a withering vine against these beautiful, well-kempt flowers and connected sons of millionaires.
I didn't dress as well as they - my jeans were from Marshall's not Marshall Fields. My hair was long and heavy, like a poodle. My self-esteem, having grown under the selfish care of a narcissistic mother, was virtually non-existent. My outer appearance was gangly, disheveled, and awkward. So I endured their taunts, their ridicule, and worse, their social judgments.
Yet this was only a small section of my life. I moved on, attended university, then entered the job market. I then began to realize that I could think. And not only that, I could dream. And I dreamed much, about politics, about the media (my field of study) and philosophy. By my mid-twenties, I married my husband and the financial woes I grew with abated somewhat. I took better care of my outer appearance, for no better reason, perhaps, than because I could. I wore make-up. I adopted the role of a fresh-faced twentysomething woman who planned to make it in her business.
And I thought I could do so because I could think. How wrong I discovered that to be.
The men. Mostly older, they found me as beautiful, interesting prey. I realized quickly that my ability to think merely compounded my enhanced outer appearance, but not in a way that garnered respect. A business vice president, two university professors, and a few coworkers saw me as something odd, exotic perhaps, but a woman they wanted to capture and control. The more powerful the man, certainly, the worse it became. And when I resisted - when I put up a fight - I discovered more narcissism not too unlike what I endured with my mother. Retaliation, selfishness, and viciousness enveloped me. The women about me, especially in corporate life, treated me mostly with disdain and disrespect. They couldn't imagine that I could think and dream. Certainly, a few of them assumed, I planned to bed with any man that could help me in the business or academic worlds.
This year, while finishing my Master's, I had a particularly interesting experience with a fellow graduate student with whom I was working on a research project. He was liberal, like me, but took one look at me and assumed me to be incompetent and subintellectual. He treated me as such, with cruel gestures toward superficial aspects of my outer appearance. I ignored him for the most part, doing only what I needed to complete the project, and kept good relations with my professor. I wonder if he understood, especially as a liberal, how hypocritical he was in judging someone he saw as having more resources than he; furthermore, how sexist his insinuations were. He was small in my eyes.
I'm considering moving on in my academic studies, and yet I wonder if I will ever garner respect for what I think and dream. I sometimes wonder: should I cut my hair short? Should I neglect my make-up, my clothes, or some other aspect of me so that for once someone can look at me and not judge what they see? A part of me wishes I were invisible, that I could simply write and think and dream and yet never face the outside world. So that they will see what they've been blind to for so many years. So that they can see that I am more than merely a physical appearance.
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