monday overthink

until i am old and unfuckable, margaret atwood hits

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

i showed harper that quote from margaret atwood a week or two ago. it didn’t sit right with him, and i had a hard time explaining why it resonated with me, why it still does. we engaged in what felt like a classroom debate and i threw out the words “patriarchy” a few times without ever saying anything of substance. eventually, with a pit in my throat, i asked to stop talking about it. i think it’s because if i really said what i wanted to say, it’d be a series of cumulative and discordant anecdotes that are not really appropriate for my local restaurant/café. but anything goes on substack i suppose.

in the third grade elliott chang told me i had a mustache. by 10 years old i sat in my aunt’s apartment as she pointed a laser to my face and zapped at my upper lip. i remember the burning hairs smelled like a barbecue. i’d do this a couple more times every week or so, but it never had the permanent effect i was hoping for. it’s been a decade since then and still i modify my face and body constantly—i pluck, i pick, i exercise restraint at dinner. a nice friend or family member might tell me that no one really notices the physical flaws i obsess over, but i will never believe them, because elliott saw my mustache in the third grade.

when i was fourteen or fifteen two men approached my sister and i as we were waiting for the ferry. they smelled like day drinking and asked where we were from. “new york? well what neighborhood then? sunset park?” in an effort to avoid politeness mistaken for flirtation, i curtly said, “i’m a minor.” i thought surely that would get them to leave. “well how old?” one of them replied. i don’t remember how the interaction ended, but they eventually left us alone. a couple weeks later, i was hanging out with mackenzie downstairs from my house. one of the men from the ferry line made his way towards us. i could never forget his face—blonde swooped-back hair, greasy pinkish skin, the way he smirked—but i suppose he had forgotten mine. how deeply unremarkable i must have been for him to see me and not know it wasn’t his first time… just another stranger to hit on. before he could finish a sentence, mackenzie swiftly put her hand up and just said “no.” it’s dramatic, i know, but i felt like she saved me that night. i don’t think she knows how grateful i was to her then.

in middle school i used to let luca biro feel me up during study hall. as he grabbed me in the hallway he made fun of how flat my ass was, how i should do something about it and “have you ever tried lunges?” luca biro is an asshole and i know that now, but i still let him touch me after that. other times—like on the bus ride to D.C.—i didn’t, but he did it anyway. i still hear his words when i catch a glimpse of my side profile in a storefront window. i would never get a bbl and sometimes i think that that makes me a better feminist, but then i grimace through my third set of hip thrusts at the gym and i’m not so sure.

i seem to have a better memory than any man who has ever spoken to me. it is suffocating to hold the contradictory remarks from men i hate inside of me, but it would be dishonest to deny their presence. i don’t know what response i expect from a man when i show them that atwood quote, but i know it’s not to be told i am beautiful the way i am, that i am worth more than my looks—yes, i know, i know. i suppose the point is just to express that i am a bitter woman and that i am angry; that if i could, i would take a fork and stab the eyes behind my eyes and i want you to know that.

or maybe it’s not about you at all. maybe it’s for me to read with women and say “that’s so real” and simmer in our rage together because it’s warm here and our hearts are beating together now and i feel the energy tingling in my palms and this is as close to freedom as it gets for now. because margaret atwood wrote the phrase: “you are your own voyeur.” and in doing so she also said: “i share with you in this. we are here together.” that means a lot to me, and i wanted you to know that, is all.