When I look in the mirror I see a housewife and mother, I’ve explained this before on many occasions, I see a “normal” woman, just average, and I like that. However, post break up, I am having to re-assess who I am because it seems a lot of other people see me differently. For example: I’ve never seen myself as “hot”, or for that matter sexy or anything along those line. Cute, yes, adorable, yes, sweet even, but I’m not one of those perfectly preened, skinny women who teeters down the street as if she’s on a catwalk. Firstly, I’m far from skinny, but mainly I just don’t want to look like an airhead! I hope that I’m a happy medium: I tend to aim for nicely dressed but comfy and practical.

However, it has come to my attention that men seem to think that I am one of “those” women, or at least somewhere close and I have no idea how to deal with it. (I’m going to say at this point just writing this makes me feel uncomfortable and I have no idea how to say this without sounding arrogant but I’m really not!) I’ve never really had a problem attracting men, that I’ll admit to, but it just never occurred to me that it was because they thought I was attractive, I just assumed they thought I was easy (which, for the record, I’m not!). To a certain extent I still think that, after all, men are only after one thing, right? But for some reason I think I’m doing myself a disservice to think that way, after all, I’m not ugly so surely some of them have to be saying it because they think it’s true?

With it being summer I’ve started wearing skirts again, shorts, strappy tops, more revealing clothes basically and men seem to have noticed: They stop talking to watch me walk past, they whisper to their mates while eyeing me up, they *shudders* wolf whistle and honk their horns. The vocal stuff gives me heart failure, I mean seriously, I panic in a major way and want to run and hide somewhere, quietly watching I can handle but anything else and I want to die. But why are they doing it? Am I secretly attractive and haven’t noticed? Or are they just hoping I’ll give them an eyeful? And more to the point: how do you deal with it? If it was my mother I know she’d be winking at them, showing a bit more leg and generally encouraging them, but I’m just not like that.Am I supposed to accept that I may be one of “those” women? Or do I carry on as normal? Or something else entirely?

Since dyeing my hair (only yesterday) my alleged sexiness seems to have sky rocketed, so it seems I am going to have to get a grip and figure out a way to handle it. Not only that I’ve lost a fair bit of weight without actually doing anything so body wise I’m looking the best I have too. I suddenly find myself panicking that I need to fit in with the “popular girls” again, but we’re not in high school now so can I just stay me? Does the fact that I’m wearing figure hugging clothes change who I am? Does it mean I have to start going to salons and keeping up with fashion? What if I start to change who I am again when I’m perfectly happy the way I am now? I suddenly feel very exposed: I might as well be walking around naked. It’s fine when I look in the mirror and think “you look pretty today” or when a friend says something nice, but with so many people noticing me I feel quite scared. I don’t like to be looked at, I’d much rather blend in to the background but the girl with the purple hair is never going to blend in, is she?

Oh god! What have I done?!

I think I can get away with entering this for the combined Gallery and Writing Workshop this week: there’s emotions, there’s a photo….

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