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What are you doing to make them look dirty to you? Are you uncombed? Smelly? Wear clothes that won't fit? Too tight? too short, belly hanging out? Bad hair cut? Wearing pajama outside the house? You are a woman, we have tons of tricks to make ourselve look okay even if we aren't blessed with the beauty gene.
Seriously from the posts I believe the look on the OP's face may cause folks to be uncomfortable and not look pleasantly at her.
I'm so tired of getting dirty looks from men. I have tried ignoring them, telling them off, giving them dirty looks back and just walking away from it. Its because I don't look attractive but why do they care? I don't do anything wrong either which makes me even more angry. I just walk into a store and men have the most evil look on their face like I ruined their day. I want to punch them but I can't. Sometimes I walking in a parking lot to go into a store and a man will just start coughing, hacking and spitting because I walked by, to try to intimidate me...
I try to ignore it by realizing they are pathetic but it's not enough.. I am building my self esteem because I was raised without it but it's hard because I don't get a llot of support minus the crap I have to deal with on a daily basis. Men believe that if a women is beautiful, she deserves kindess and anything less deserves to be ignored or ridiculed. Maybe not for older women but young women this is true. How do I deal with it without so much anger anymore because I don't need their negativity in my life?
Perhaps you might consider speaking with a shrink about all this.
there's this pale, fat woman at my kid's daycare. When she drops her kid off she never smiles, says hi, or makes eye contact.... just always has this "blah" look on her face. I'll bet her husband is probably just as fat. This is who I envision when I think of the OP.
It doesn't give them a right, but it gives them a reason. People are human. Some of them aren't very mature. If you deliberately provoke them (as in your example of looking at someone on a NYC train when you know it tends to provoke suspicion and annoyance) then maybe that's not the most adaptive strategy you could pursue. Those who want to be provocative have to accept the need for thick skin. It doesn't sound like the OP is one of those thick skinned kinds of people.
In any event I'm just a sagging old fart who is not particularly remarkable and people almost never glare at me. By acclimation, others here are making essentially the same claim. So if "everyone" "always" glares at you, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that you're either exaggerating it in your mind or you're provoking it in some way ... whether or not people "should" react as they do, they are. The only actionable thing then is your attitude / actions / appearance / odor / the people you choose to be around / whatever. You can't change other people, you have no right. You can only change yourself. It's not always "fair" but it's reality.
This is getting into conforming territory.
Besides,in my case,it is my hair. I wear a huge afro,and I will not conform.
I'm so tired of getting dirty looks from men. I have tried ignoring them, telling them off, giving them dirty looks back and just walking away from it. Its because I don't look attractive but why do they care? I don't do anything wrong either which makes me even more angry. I just walk into a store and men have the most evil look on their face like I ruined their day. I want to punch them but I can't. Sometimes I walking in a parking lot to go into a store and a man will just start coughing, hacking and spitting because I walked by, to try to intimidate me...
I try to ignore it by realizing they are pathetic but it's not enough.. I am building my self esteem because I was raised without it but it's hard because I don't get a llot of support minus the crap I have to deal with on a daily basis. Men believe that if a women is beautiful, she deserves kindess and anything less deserves to be ignored or ridiculed. Maybe not for older women but young women this is true. How do I deal with it without so much anger anymore because I don't need their negativity in my life?
Give them a dirty look back, lock eyes, like a laser beam
Besides,in my case,it is my hair. I wear a huge afro,and I will not conform.
People do not like it,not my problem.
If you truly believe the last sentence and will not play the martyr, then that is fine, since you have the right to wear any sort of hair you want. Like I said earlier in my post, noncomformity implies the need for thick skin. You can't care enough to be hurt by people who demand conformity.
But the OP's broader history that she's shared seems to be that she cares too much to afford herself the luxury of making "statements". At least until she figures out how to have a firm personal center, she's just cutting off her nose to spite her face to be "loud and proud". One thing at a time.
In any event the OP professes to have no clue what people are reacting to, so it would make perfect sense to figure out what they are reacting to (including the distinct possibility that she's misreading the situation in the first place).
Let us say the OP has an out of this world hairdo.
That still does NOT give people the right to look at her weird.
It's human nature to look at one of your own species who looks bizarre by choice.
What do you think chimps would do, if another chimp in the group turned up purple one day? Do you think they'd ignore it? No way. They might eventually accept it, but there would be much ado about the purple chimp.
If someone goes out of his/her way to look different, they are inviting attention because of it; they do it because they WANT attention. So it makes no sense to complain when they get it.
Where does OP go to gripe that everyone scowls at her on a message board?
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