yeah, i was sitting around with the gals in high school, in our journalism class. our teacher was a hippie of the highest order, and frequently came
to school dressed in pajamas. anyway, out of nowhere comes this tall, slender basketball hero. he stares directly at my breasts, and says, "you're
nothing but a big dumb blonde", then he grins slyly, chuckles to himself and sits down in a nearby chair.
it wasn't that i wasn't blonde, or that i wasn't chesty, rather it was the obvious case of projection he was suffering from, that evoked an almost
indescribable reaction. a sort of primal anger welled up inside me. he looked back over his shoulder, perhaps to revel in his misogynist triumph,
just in time to get hit in the face by my copy of ELLE (a french, high fashion magazine). frowning and rubbing his nose he said, "why'd you do
that you stupid bitch?" (dramatic license applied) he really didn't get it. perhaps it really wasn't his fault. perhaps, his parents had
taught him to behave this way, i theorized.
in order to support my elderly parents in my father's last days from a 5 year bout with prostate cancer, i went to work in a factory. the men did
not want women in their factory, as these were the beginnings of equal opportunity employment. one gentleman made that perfectly clear, when he
applied tape to 2 pallet tags and proceeded to tape them to my nipples.
it seemed the curse of the breasts was following me around. they weren't abnormally large, just a pleasant 36c. why the fascination with them and
the very odd tendency to think they had the right to touch them, make fun of them and tape things to the protruding parts of them, i will never know.
did i mention it was an union factory, the supervisor of which was none to happy to learn a man old enough to be grandfather, had just sexually
accosted an 18 year old female (my age at the time) for no other reason than he felt compelled to do so and had found the shocked expression on my
face to be quite humorous?
but that was just the beginning of trouble. it would get increasingly worse.
the incident with the gentlemen who felt it necessary to sniff everywhere i sat, while making suggestive moaning sounds, being a prime example.
clearly, being an unmarried and quite inexperienced young lady, this kind of bizarre harrassment was beyond the pale of shock treatment to my naive
sensibilities. in short, i was horrified. my stomach turned, followed by anger that flared up from the unnecessary trauma this treatment was doing to
my self-image and understanding of the dynamic between men and women in adult life. i was livid. "ewww gross," was all i could muster as i backed
away from him as if he were covered in dung. "prude!" he exclaimed and marched out of the lunchroom in a huff.
later, he organized his revenge for my harsh remark (?!). he made arrangements to have the centerfold for hustler magazine, clearly the ludest and
most outrageous pornography magazine of the time, to be pinned on my work station, while i was away eating my lunch on another day. this time,
however, i had a little guardian angel. a single male in the factory, who was my friend, treated me normally, and didn't seem fixated on my body
parts. he saw the deed as it unfolded. waited until the perps were out of sight, and quietly removed it from my station.
however, these little spots of light were few and far between when it came to interactions in the world of grown people, particularly, grown men.
i went home one day and pleaded with my parents, "please, can i quit this horrible job?" but it could not be so. dad was on chemotherapy and
within weeks of dying and mom had enough stress on her as it was. she was his caretaker and could not both work and care for him. so, back to the
factory i would go, dreading what new scheme would be dreamed up to victimize my tits (excuse the crassness, it just seemed fitting for the
occassion) and my frail and quickly failing self esteem.
it grew more aggressive as time went on. one fellow dropped a bra on my head from a 14ft foot platform, apparently he was certain i had never seen
one before (i wore one every day!). another, dropped a 110 lb roll of steel on my foot... oops...causing me to yank all 110 lbs up into the air in
one swift move, nearly wrenching evrey muscle in my back. ah yes, the joys of womanhood.
to bring this to a close, however prematurely, this is but a drop in a bucket, no, an endless sea of the things women have endured for thousands of
years. and i wasn't particularly attractive, just an average looking woman with average sized breasts. i could only imagine what other women were
enduring or had endured, who were markedly more beautiful or bustier or both.
eh, guess it's not as dramatic as mr. obama's. but there's alot more where that came from. thousands of years of the most horrific stories of
the ugly, cruel, spiteful, disgusting, ridiculous, violent, psychotic things that have been done to women for no better reason than they could. and it
crossed all racial boundaries, all financial brackets, and all religious brackets.
so yeah, we ladies, we win the po po pitiful me, if ya really think about it.
[edit on 3-9-2008 by undo]
