Musings and rantings

Following a very unpleasant comment I received on Saturday from a 'gentleman' leaning out of his car window and shouting "How much darlin'?", I have been musing about the way that women's dress is received in daily life.  On Saturday I was wearing about 1 1/2 inch high heels and a knitted dress from h&m, which was short but covered everything, and also walking with my brother (all scruffy 6ft 3 of him).  And yet this guy felt it was appropriate to shout at me that I looked like a prostitute.  I responded by sticking my middle finger up at him, to which his passenger guffawed, but what in the hell made it OK for him to say that?  I must admit it actually irked and upset me for quite a sizeable chunk of the rest of my day.

Why is this perceived as OK?  When doing internships and wearing formal dresses, I get catcalls, wandering through city centres in skirts gets comments- although it always seems to be if I'm wearing a skirt and generally not if I've got a low cut top on, even though I consider my boobs more interesting than my legs!

But why the comments?  Noone comments if a guy goes out wearing shorts or something.  Is a woman's body perceived as public property?  Why can I not wear a dress and shoes that I happen to think make me look pretty without becoming seen as just an easily accessible sex object?  It seems as if a woman's dress is often taken as part of a performance and indeed a call for lewd comments- regardless of whether she is dressing for herself or even trying to impress someone, her body becomes part of the public domain.  Is it a way of reprimanding a woman who is seen as stepping out of line, in that women should not be trying to dress attractively?  Or do men like the man in the car think that if they demand something sexual from a woman they happen to see, she should be flattered and acquiesce?

I certainly am not prepared to accept comments like this.  Petty as it may be, I'll always yell or make a rude gesture, whilst the mental former martial artist part of me is dying to get into a fight with the commenter.  But is this the right response?  Is it empowering to tell them to fuck themselves, or better to not dignify such action with any recognition?

The return.

So I neglected this blog and went back to the mental expulsion of tumblr, and occasionally I do still post stuff on there, but increasingly I find it's just a car crash of people who are either 15 or have a mental age thereof desperate to expunge their feelings in the most ridiculously overblown ways possible.

I got back home on Saturday evening, having had a rather uncomfortable drive up because my brother decided he wanted to come up as well.  I've spent today sorting out some of my packing; going through washing and sheets, along with planning meals for the family for the next week, which will hopefully go down OK.  I washed the cars at the weekend (although a bird pooed on my car's bonnet this afternoon, how dare it it was so beautifully polished!) and so they were gleaming nicely, but I caught the sun on my neck thanks to my patented skin colour options of burnt or white and now I have a horrible itchy rash which I convinced myself earlier was meningitis.  Holy run-on sentence, batman.  I'm now doped up on anti-histamine tablets so I need to write this and then go wash my face so I can then go collapse in my bed.

I'm feeling very domestic and missing the boy enormously- went to get some paint from Focus earlier and found paint samples, so I started imagining us living together and painting our own house...I think I can be a rather ridiculous individual!

I've been looking to try and join a gym for the three months that I'm home as otherwise I tend to go slightly insane without exercise.  My mum's gym didn't answer the phone so I'll ring them again in the morning and the council-owned gym has me down for an appointment on Wednesday, blatantly a ploy to try and get me to sign up immediately.  We'll see how it goes.

And for now, I actually must head to bed.  G'night all.