But I totally get that this piece wasn’t about just physical ugliness, but about a desire to project an aggressive absence of compliance with the bullshit status quo. Which is something I can get behind. And obviously, for women, noncompliance with the status quo does have a big visual/presentational aspect.

Fat and old is the best. They will totally not even notice the middle-aged white lady until after I’ve thrown the molotov cocktail.

Short hair also helps, fwiw.

Nope. Not even a little bit. Men tend to ignore me and go for the other women I’m with.

Same age as you. I went through a brief period of sadness over losing the automatic attention given to younger women. Then, I noticed that I was not invisible to all people, only to those who use others to fulfill selfish needs. I was invisible to men with poor self-esteen, men who only wanted to get laid, women who…

Also, I recommend getting older :)

Try getting old. I am 58 and my new superpower is that I am invisible to men under 80 as well as to a surprising number of women.

Have you noticed that catcalling and street harassment are often framed as an absolutely universal experience for all women? “If you’re alive and female this is the constant background static of your life”. I’ve had guys on the street yell at me twice, once was when I was a teenager and they were asking my friends…

And get old. It’s awesome for getting guys to ignore you. I’m loving it so much. Fat and old is BONUS!

“Men don’t protect women anymore.”

Whenever I read a frothy article that’s all ‘Here are the top ten things in women’s fashion that men hate’, I just want to do everything on the list as a reminder that I do not exist for anybody’s boner. It’s that level of pettiness that led to me cutting off all of my hair after a boyfriend told me he didn’t want me…

(an occupational hazard when you’re a woman writer, a life hazard when you’re kind of a bitch)