Note to self: Unlike your
butthead ex, the entire planet doesn't see you as fat and ugly.
I was about 245 pounds when I got the job at Aflac where that occurred. My late mom and ex husband were both endlessly critical of my weight and most of America seems to agree that if you're not reed thin, you might as well get your vagina surgically removed because it has no use.
If you didn't ask for seconds at dinner, you were insulting Mom's cooking. If you did ask for seconds, it was NO WONDER you were so fat!
As an adult, my response became "Pass the potatoes. You're a wonderful cook, mom. Thanks for making dinner." I stopped having anything else to say about it after I grew up and moved out.
Unlike her, I grew up in a secure suburb in the US. There was always a cornucopia of food, there were no bombs falling in the backyard and I never had to watch Russian soldiers rape my mother and older sister. So I chose to not act like she wasn't good enough because of her baggage from atrocities I can't imagine and don't want to.
The ex husband has extremely serious eye issues. One time, we had a conversation where he indicated that he saw no difference between my brown hair and his mother's brown hair.
Unlike most brunettes, I have both blonde and red undertones and can go either direction. It bleaches out readily in sunlight and is more often than not some shade of blonde, though I guess I didn't get out much as a full-time homemaker because while married and during lockdown for COVID, I was a brunette.
My unusual hair always drew a lot of comments but the ex apparently literally couldn't see the details that make it unusual. Perhaps that's part of why he seemed to see me as fat and ugly while other men hit on me constantly and kept desperately trying to tell me they would love to take care of business if he didn't want to.
Whatever their personal reasons for being hypercritical of my weight and looks, my mother and ex husband were two of the most important people in my life and neither of them made me feel like I was attractive or good enough in their eyes. I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what other people see when they look at me, but I look in the mirror and see someone who is no longer a drop dead gorgeous 25 year old and never will be again.
While I am fine with how I look, I don't actually feel attractive, no.
Because of my medical situation, I haven't worn makeup in years and haven't had much hair in years. I've also mostly lived in men's T-shirts and sweatpants for a lot of years, one part medical reasons and one part poverty.
I sometimes get called "Sir." So I know my opinion that I don't look like a beautiful woman anymore isn't me being delusional.
As noted above, I was celibate for medical reasons while working at Aflac and tried to deflect attention away from that fact. I didn't wish to discuss it with coworkers.
I was there to pursue my career goals and earn a living, not pick up men. My lack of a sex life wasn't anything I cared to discuss with coworkers for any reason.
I'm still celibate to this day and had been celibate for some years by the time I arrived in Aberdeen, Washington and
inadvertently tripped across information about meetings open to the public that I chose to attend.
But some retired architect in town was shopping around his idea at EVERY organization in town that we should build a BOAT in Zelasko Park.
He was old enough to be senile...
I honestly don't even remember this guy's name, but for all that I talk trash constantly about Wil Russoul, this retired architect and his sexual harassment of me is the reason I stopped attending meetings for the Main Street program for a time.
I know he was senile and losing his faculties because there was some email exchange where he asked me if I preferred being called by my name or the name of some other woman in the discussion. He clearly thought he was being diplomatic and charming while making up excuses to talk to me privately when really he was just revealing that he wasn't playing with a full deck anymore.
I was attending these meetings to pursue my interests and in hopes of networking and establishing a freelance income on the ground. I was celibate for medical reasons and wore no makeup and dressed in a fashion that I'm certain my mother would have sternly disapproved of and yet this old geezer is looking at me and apparently seeing a pretty young thing and nothing but a piece of ass who MUST be attending public meetings to make it easier for him to pick up women.
I spoke with both Bobbie McCracken of Main Street and Michael Dickerson of Our Aberdeen and advised them about how this guy was a problem for me and had gone so far as to physically block me from leaving the meeting one day because he wanted to talk to me and to hell with whatever I wanted, so I was seriously concerned this would lead to an ugly confrontation.
In the course of discussing the issue with Michael Dickerson, Dickerson said something about women being after the architect's money and I said "Nope." His wife Sylvia Dickerson was in poor health and expected to drop dead any second now and after he learned I don't chase men for their money, Michael Dickerson got a lot nicer towards me in a superficial chatty fashion while still making it difficult to get a paycheck out of Our Aberdeen and doing NOTHING to further my goals of establishing a freelance income locally on the ground.
Like the architect, Michael Dickerson was "old enough to be my father." Well, not MY father, who was forty when I was born. But the father of someone my age, certainly.
I don't know how in the hell a woman gets taken seriously in a professional setting because I perpetually feel like I get treated like nothing but a piece of ass no matter how old and unsexy and unattractive I personally may feel.
This is not me whining and crying about my life. I know people like to think that.
I frequently speak from firsthand experience to try to explain something and it mostly gets me accused of being a narcissist or gets me a pity party from people who apparently want to believe I have a personal problem and it couldn't possibly be a systemic issue, no.
On Metafilter, some conversation made me realize other women routinely feel imprisoned in a relationship strangling their life. It gave me pause and made me wonder if I ever want to get involved with a man again.
I haven't quite had an equivalent experience in this aspect of my life to this epiphany about my uncommon name:
I stopped bellyaching about how my life would be vastly better if ONLY I had a more common name when I read an article about a woman named Lisa S. Davis and her 18 year long effort to combat "identity theft" only to learn it was a bureaucratic snafu involving another real person with her exact same name and birth date