you don't own me and i don't owe you.

I've been thinking a lot about the annoyances of being a woman ever since I got back from my cross country train trip. A few things have brought this to the top of my mind right now. There's this article about some pretty scary harassment one woman had to deal with on a subway train. Then there's this story about a news anchor who had a viewer write in to tell her that she was too fat to be on television and a poor role model for young girls. Just more instances of how men feel like they are entitled to something from women they don't even know.

There has been a lot of debate over the fat-shaming episode. Some people say that obesity is a huge problem and this anchor should be concerned about it.  Others say that since the man delivered his message without being overly cruel or mean that it was okay for him to call her out. I think that both of those arguments miss the point. The fact is this - society has created an atmosphere where men (and sometimes other women) feel like they have ownership of all women's bodies. It's like being a woman means your body is automatically up for grabs (both literally and figuratively). I highly doubt if that had been a man on the evening news that Mr. Douchebag Viewer would've felt the need to write in and comment on his weight. I particularly enjoyed when he told her, "Surely you don't consider yourself a suitable example for this community's young people, girls in particular."Why is it only women who need a healthy example? What about men? Obviously, men don't need to worry about their bodies because some dickhead viewer isn't going to write in and attack them. That kind of bullshit is reserved strictly for women.

Taking it back to your average man on the street, I can't stop thinking about my train stalker, who felt the need to constantly get up in my business and try to chat me up, even when I was reading or had headphones on. It was like I owed him some kind of attention just because he was a man and had some interest in me. Some of my coworkers asked why I didn't just shut him down. I didn't want to do that because we were on a train. An enclosed space where I had really nowhere to go if he decided he wanted to be affronted by the fact that a 27 year old woman traveling alone did not want to talk to some 50-something guy she had never met before. I was alone and I didn't feel like causing any trouble. I've known a lot of women who've told random men who approached them that they were trying to read or didn't feel like talking, and a lot of those stories end up with even more harassment. I hate the fact that as a woman, I can't just travel alone or hell - hop on the bus outside of my house and go to work - without risking harassment or invasion of my personal space. I can remember the first time I realized that my body was a commodity for men. I was 14 years old and I had gone into the city Manhattan with a friend and her parents to go shopping. I was trying on jewelry when two men in their FIFTIES made suggestive comments about my body and what they would do to it. It was the first time I felt truly powerless in my own skin.

So I'd like to take a quick second to deliver a message to random men everywhere who think they can invade my space, tell me what I can do with my body, or tell me how my body is or isn't healthy. My body is my own - you don't own it. You don't have the right to touch me, criticize me, or even to comment on how fat/skinny/ugly/sexy you think it is. And I don't owe you jack shit - not a conversation, not a smile, nothing. If that makes me a bitch, so be it.