Don't Look into My Eyes, Look at My Boobs

Walking on the street in London, nobody looks into your eyes.  But at your boobs, yes.

Do you know how that feels?  Humiliating. There is no celebration, no "Hi, sexy!" to make me feel good in return.

What are my options?

1. Kill myself
2. Kill everybody else
3. Take it as a compliment.

Joking aside, what hurts is that I just heard option 1 from one of the most beautiful women I ever seen. She will have her breasts reduced by surgery on Monday.  She cried when she said that.

"I am not a bimbo. I worked so hard to prove I am an intelligent person. And no matter what I wear, I still see their eye line going straight here", she says, pointing at her beautiful chest. "I want to be treated like a normal person."  Will surgery remove her feeling of humiliation?

In a country where women are not celebrated, except after hours when people get drunk, it is not easy to learn to celebrate yourself. There is a sense of shame or unease about dressing up and showing your body. I grew up in a Latin, sunshine country. My confidence as a woman came from compliments, from being celebrated, on the street and elsewhere by men complimenting me openly, with words or admiring glances (which included my eyes and face, by the way).

Coming to England, my confidence was shaken by the total lack of celebration of my womanhood - at least by sober people. There were no compliments, no Womens' Day, no feeling good about being a woman, let alone a young, pretty one.

If anything, there was something more akin humiliation, shame and being ignored.

If a man liked me, he invited me to the pub - and since I don't drink, I never got to hear the compliments that come after drinking, in the pub.

When I started working, after grueling years in university for top marks in Software Engineering and Politics, the new employers looked at me and my dress with suspicion, and one asked me in an interview: "Do you like working with men?" I said "I like men" - but my voice was frozen, and so was the rest of me.  There was nothing more intimidating than being one of the three women in an office full of men. Who would rarely speak to me, but would eye up my body and clothes. And I can really work well and hard. I run a team (of men) now.

Now, after many years, I learned my mantras. When I walk in a new office (full of men) I say in my head "They'll get used to it" - and I carry on wearing dresses and showing my cleavage. I am the one to get used to it. I sigh with relief every time a Latin man, an East European, or an African one comes along and gushes compliments at me, in and out of the office (or the pub). After all, we are both celebrating women, in a simple and necessary way.

Yes, I need compliments. We all do. It's our way of saying "Thank God for women".  What's wrong with that?  What is the point of feeling shamed by the society around us for having a woman's body, and boobs?  What's wrong with celebrating them?

I am still trying to persuade her not to have the boob job. I think she'll need the other options: 2. Kill everybody else - or 3. Take it as a compliment - and celebrate it.