appearance

T.Z.

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This is but one of many encounters I’ve had like this but this was the most recent and sums up a lot of the behavior I’ve dealt with. I am a single woman in my early twenties. My father passed away very recently, so I’m in mourning at my home. People are in and out, and during one visit, I mentioned that I wish I could change my shirt since it was ratty, but couldn’t do so at the time. Presumably joking, a female friend said that I should worry about that because people here are looking me over to see if I’m marriage material. This may have been said in jest, but there’s a definite, unfortunate truth to it. I had to field a fun comment from a relative, “You’re going to get married and have a man take care of you, but your mother is all alone now so you need to take care of her.” I’m so glad that I apparently am going to get married asap and a man will make all my problems go away.

XTina

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Thursday I tried to get Start Up Funding, but as soon as I went to use the slide show, I was mocked as if I didn’t “know” how to do a slide show, BEFORE I EVEN DID IT OR STARTED TALKING! Of course I knew – I had it even saved it to the desktop. Most of the room were males as well. That makes me wonder if it is because of my appearance. I don’t think they even knew what it would be about before, right? It also is about a website… and well, I feel sexism each day. From mechanics, to websites. If you notice, all the main websites I think were founded by males…

Yasmin

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At a stand-up comedy gig in Shepherd’s Bush. I was the only woman in the room and was relentlessly picked on by the comedians, who would not stop telling me how “gorgeous” I was. One asked whether I was dating the male friend I had come to support, when told no my friend was advised to simply “keep trying”. Another said to the whole room that I was “a woman worth dying over, or at least spraining a wrist over” and received thunderous laughter from the audience. I left feeling utterly humiliated. Was I supposed to find that funny?

marie

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I once discovered that if I googled “best actors,” the first page of results were all about which actors were the best at acting, but if I googled “best actresses,” the first page of results were all about which actresses were the most attractive. To add insult to injury, I told my parents about this and my dad said “So?”