OK Then

Herself speaks.

I am in a different city, attending a continuing education seminar. It's... an experience. I clearly don't get out much. 

I'm not necessarily sorry that I don't get out much. While the speakers have useful and interesting things to say, there is also a great amount of networking, which involves small talk and other social interactions that I find somewhat exhausting, as well as a certain amount of "let me sell myself and my skills" activity which is equally taxing.

And then, there are people in general.

I am staying at a swanky hotel where the conference is being held, and it is attached to a very posh mall. (Pictures will follow in the next few days.)  I took a stroll through the posh mall. At one point, a very carefully coiffed and eager young man tried to sell me a wrinkle-reducing cream that only cost "four ninety-nine", he said. I blinked at him and said, "four ninety-nine... DOLLARS?" Yes - $499. Good heavens, who buys these things?? Well, probably the same kind of person who would shop at the many designer goods stores. You know the kind: where one artfully-arranged product is the sole focus of the display. The number of items in the front window is inversely proportional to the cost of the items. 

I took an escalator to the higher floor. The airspace was quite open, so I looked around at all the stores and mall decorations on the way up. As I neared the top of the escalator, a man of uncertain age had just begun to descend on the opposite escalator. He looked over at me, and semi-shouted, in order to make sure I could hear him across the airspace between the escalators:

"NICE SHIRT."

What? 

I reflexively shouted back, THANK YOU. In retrospect, that must have confused him. The escalators continued, and I was deposited on the top floor as he disappeared to the floor below.

OK Then.

Ugh.

-----

It has been a very, very long time since a stranger in public has commented on my appearance; I have become quite accustomed to being an invisible middle-aged woman. And yet, this complete stranger felt compelled to raise his voice to let me know he was looking at me. If I had been wearing some kind of fantastic, earth-shattering garment, that might have been understandable. Yet I was not. I was wearing an ordinary black shirt with a floral pattern; it was not particularly low cut or tight or otherwise noteworthy. A middle-aged woman's shirt, as it were.

I'm an ample girl, though. There's no hiding that. So essentially, this man was shouting at me: I have noticed your breasts and find them aesthetically pleasing. 

For fuck's sake. 

What is it, that allows some people to feel entitled to comment on another person's anatomy? Why do they feel as though it is at all appropriate or welcome to do so? 

Just no.

I am reminded of being 15 years old and wearing my favorite mauve sweatshirt to a baseball game, when that drunken stranger shouted at me, NICE SWEATSHIRT, SWEETHEART. Apparently, things are still changed, thirty-six years later. And just when I thought I was safe from such comments -- oh, look, I am not.

Yuck.

I might need to come up with a better response to such comments. Just in case. 

I will avoid other people's attentions,

just as tiny dog does when faced with a camera.