Women judging other women’s bodies by default is truly messed up, but sadly common. The specific type of internalized misogyny is definitely due to societal pressures, but still not ok. Here is the solution if you find yourself judging other women:
(via: Pinterest)
Little secret for you. Most guys, most of the time if we pass each other on the street don’t notice or think about your bodies. We have other things on our minds. If we’re on our way into work we’re probably thinking about what we have to do today, maybe thinking about lunch. If we’re on our way home from work we’re probably thinking about all the things we’d planned to do but didn’t get around to, or we’re thinking about dinner. Or we might be thinking about a TV show, a sports game, whether that pain in our leg is a muscle strain or cancer, what we’d do if armed robbers leapt out of a van and ran into the bank, if penguins have knees, or possibly that at least we had a nice lunch today. We may be comfortably in our ‘nothing box’ and not really thinking about anything. If we notice your body at all it’s most likely only on a “There’s a person there, don’t bump into them” sort of level. We might pay attention if you are wearing something really eye catching like a big hat or a really bright jacket, or if you have a cute dog with you, other than that, most guys, most of the time, not really paying attention.
Seriously. Last week I was on the bus and a woman sat next to me for about 40 minutes. If I was asked to describe her all I’d be able to say is a bit shorter than me, wearing black leggings (or maybe they were yoga pants, I’m not sure of the difference) and a black jacket, her hair may have been brown. The dog she had on her lap however was a not quite full grown King Charles with reddish brown in it’s dark patches and really soulful eyes, it’s collar was deep burgundy and from what I saw of it’s ID tag was named Penny, or maybe that was the owners name. It spent most of the journey on her lap with its head resting on my leg looking up at me. It nuzzled my hand so I stroked its head for a bit, after getting the OK from the woman. By the time they got off my trouser leg and the woman’s leggings were covered in little white hairs, this was the main reason I remember the colour of the leggings, because I thought they really showed up the hairs and she’d probably need to take a clothes brush to them.
There are undoubtedly a tiny percentage of men who will pay attention to and even comment the appearance of random women. But, they’re immature idiots and in no way representative of men.
OK well. I respect that that is your experience. But I’m trying to correlate your tiny percentage of men who ever notice women with the huge percentage of women that have had men yell or say things at them about their appearance. Surprisingly, that doesn’t really correlate. And it’s interesting that you think your experience, or even one experience, is representational of other peoples experiences
While your intention is to reassure, what you might not understand is that being noticed and not being noticed are still intimately linked. If she’s noticed, a woman must contend with imagining in what way she is being noticed; if she is not being noticed, what we have learned is that we have failed and that failure is tied to self-worth. It isn’t the noticing; it is the internal and external cultural mandate that we perform in one way or another as women, on a very rudimentary level, to exist. It’s the male gaze that is still active, even when it appears not to be (and in the context of the original post, is internalized)