Thoughtless Comments

It's late. I should be asleep. In fact, I want to be asleep. But I stayed up doing the sort of last minute playing around that ends up lasting way longer than expected and then when I was laying in bed a couple memories that have been bothering me occasionally over the past few years came to mind and I feel like I need to write them out.

First
Well, I think it was chronologically second. But I thought of it first tonight and feel like it should be told first for whatever reason.

I'm over at my guy friends' place watching a football game. The camera focuses for a while on a group of cheerleaders and one of the guys says, "Get off the screen. You're ugly."

I say something in response to this - I think sarcastically saying something like that of course the girls should be selected for the squad based on his personal conception of beauty. It wasn't enough, and it was said sort of jokingly, but it was all I could think of to do at the time. Because how do you go about calling out your friend, in front of all his other friends, in the middle of a game that you are really into, on being cruel and completely disrespectful of women when you don't have time to consider what to say?

But the thing is, that little comment was saying, in essence, "Because I do not find you sufficiently attractive, you are of no worth, however great your skills may be."

Also, these girls, to me, looked completely normal. And you know what I see when I look in my mirror? A normal girl. So the message also goes out to me that I am insufficiently attractive to be of value.

Second

I'm at the same place with another girl and two guys. The guy from above may have been one of the two; I have forgotten. Anyway, the two guys are making some unkind remarks about a certain celebrity woman's appearance when the other girl says something like, "And do you guys really not understand why girls are so insecure about their appearance?"

They don't. I say something about how hearing people say that sort of thing can make you wonder what's being said about you behind your back, and one of the guys basically says that they wouldn't say anything like that about us, but the other woman was putting herself out there as a celebrity - an actress, I think she was - and so she was more or less making herself a fair target for such remarks.

I couldn't think of how to respond at the time. But I will try now.

First of all, it's not just wondering what you would actually say, but what you are thinking about me. If you are willing to think about this woman so hypercritically about things she has no real control over, why shouldn't I think you'd apply the same standards to me?

Second, making a career doing something I love, like acting and singing, should not make it permissible for you to treat me with less courtesy than you would the girl next door. Actresses are just as human as college students. Being famous does not turn a person into a piece of meat.

Like I said, these guys were my friends. They wouldn't have been my friends if I believed they really disrespected women. Their day to day actions don't match that. But these little, thoughtless comments they made and then probably forgot about by the next day are still there for me, influencing me enough to keep me up at night years later.