Always A Lady

As a direct response to my post entitled The sleezy, sleezy Frenchman, and in no small way inspired by reading the WIG's blog and her link to this post on pandagon.net*, I have created this short (and hopefully terribly useful) guide on how to not get hit on in public.

1. Dress appropriately. You know, like a nun or whatever. You shouldn't want to look good for you if you don't want someone to leer at you and tell you how good you look. Don't think about what clothes you're putting on unless you want a man to try to talk you out of them.

2. Don't smile. At anyone. At any time. Having fun with your friends, laughing, smiling, these are all signs that you want strange men to approach you. Your smile, no matter whom it may be intended for, is an open invitation, nay an order, sent out to all surrounding men. You are asking for it.

3. Um, be a lesbian? But not the sexy kind. The really mean kind. The feminist kind. Cut your hair short but don't take care to shave anything else.‡ But, if you are a lesbian, and you are in public with your partner, whatever you do do not engage in any PDA. If you want to express your love out in the open like that, you have to accept that's it's totally cool and normal for a man to get in the middle of it. Like, that's his god-given right. So be a mean, ugly, feminist, single lesbian.

Me disguised as a nerdy man. Disguises can be very important when trying the ward off the advances of the opposite sex.

4. Say something smart. It doesn't matter what, it doesn't even matter if it makes sense. If a strange man approaches you, try to launch immediately into a discussion of the gender binary or just use the words "dichotomy" and "facism" in the same sentence and watch how far they run. Intelligent women are the opposite of sexually appealing. And they hate sex. Like you.

5. Stay home and read your scriptures, you prude. If you detest the "uninvited attention" of men so much, you must hate sex and men and fun. (Didn't you read number 4?) You can't possibly be both an intelligent woman who does not want to be accosted by strangers and someone who likes flirting and feeling attractive.

So there you have it, five simple rules to live by, ladies. If you break them, it's your own damn fault.




*Dear god, I wish I could force my sexist host brother to read this, but I am WAY too lazy to translate it into French.

‡Having short hair on your head and long hair in your armpits does not a lesbian make. However, you should expect to be taken for one, if this is your style.