My mother told me once when I was 15, “You don’t have the looks to get by in life being this stupid.” because she didn’t like the way I loaded the dishwasher.

I was touring a shoe factory in China. It was my second trip to China working for this company, and also my second trip outside the US. This time I was traveling with a small group of three men and one other woman, including the egomaniacal owner of the company, and he thought I’d made a disrespectful face and was…