The Woo has complained on her blog today, about some unpleasant male stranger being rude about her appearance, and raised the topic of whether she’s perhaps dressing inappropriately – by wearing nice, sexy clothes. I find this a terrible prob, myself. Whenever I wear anything especially nice: full prom dresses with high-heels, boned, corseted bodices, city shorts etc, I get SO much abuse. You just wouldn’t believe it. Yesterday a builder shouted: ‘Hi! Miss Piggy!’ at me, and then fell about laughing so much he nearly tumbled off his scaffold. And I wasn’t wearing anything outrageous at all. Just a slit pencil skirt skirt more than two inches above the knee and beautiful pink stilettos. What do builders, white-van man et al expect ladies over 35 to do: dress like librarians? IF we DO dress like librarians we get ignored. (And the ignoring is done in a painfully rude way, too.)
And another thing I hate: those articles in the women’s pages of upmarket broadsheets TELLING you what you should wear and mentioning the depressing words: mutton dressed as lamb.. They always say you ought to cut your hair off, too, once you get close to 40. As far as I’m concerned there’s no point going to all the trouble of having your hair streaked blonde if you’re going to trim it to look like a prison wardress. I’d always rather have torrents of abuse than become ‘invisible’.
Grr. I’m going to go off and eat some cake now.
3 comments:
I think you and the Woo are lucky really -- as a humungously obese person who is TOTALLY ignored -- and not just by builders -- you have no idea how a little bit of male attention would make my day (even the rude sort).
When you get to my size no one bothers to yell out "Miss Piggy" or "Hey Fatso" or ANYTHING at all -- you become totally invisible despite taking up twice the size of a normal human, people just look past the big unidentifiable, sexless blob.
Be grateful for small mercies -- at least the men still notice that you are a woman!
Dear Goodbyetoallfat,yes, you are quite right, and rude attention is a million times better than being totally invisible. I was thinking about all the remarks on the Woo's blog today,and wondered whether these men that yell rude stuff aren't actually displaying a sexual interest - like, a compliment. Only, instead of being yearning and admiring ( you're gorgeous...I wish I could), they are saying 'Oi, you. You're not impossibly great looking. I could actually have you, And you'd be greatful.' The insult is there to slap you into a lower place. But it is still sort of a compliment.
But you'll soon get all this from blokes, too. Incidentally, a friend who lost tons of weight said she suddenly noticed not just the male attention, but women in shops stopped treating her as if she was a special-needs person. She says she notices it now: people on tills treat very fat people, and very old people, as if they are stupid babies. And all that stopped once she reached size 16. Love from scones xx
Men can be so awful, can't they? Rude ones think any woman would be grateful, forgetting that erm, they're no oil paintings. The writer Dave Barry once pointed out that a man could have three strands of hair across his bald pate and 'a stomach you could house commercial aircraft in', and he'd still think he could laugh a woman into bed.
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