Saturday, April 30, 2022

Don't look up ... !

 

The average man will spend almost 43 minutes a day staring at ten different women, according to researchers at Kodak Lens Vision Centres who polled 3,000 people. This means that over the course of a year, men spend up to 259 hours checking out women. Over the course of their adult life, this makes a grand total of 11 months and 11 days. A year of their life is a long time to spend with their eyes fixed on the opposite sex.


So, the question is why Men stare at women so much like they are looking at them for the first time in their life. What do they think they can achieve by it? We have been living together on this planet for thousands of years, why are we still such a mystery to them?

I remember being stared at since the day I became conscious of myself, now I am 37 years old and it still hasn’t stopped. At this point I have to say that I really got bored with it, it has become quite a turn off now. If you want to talk just talk, we don’t bite. We will certainly think of you as a creep if you are going to spend eternity staring at us without uttering a word. Has any girl ever ended up being in a relationship with a guy who was creepily staring at her? I don’t think so.

I once went to admit my mother to a hospital. I was wearing a completely opaque net top because I came straight from somewhere else. The doctor was explaining me my mother’s situation and suddenly I caught him staring at my top. You would think that someone whose job is to operate on other people’s body, must be more subtle about these things but the doctor wasn’t. I caught myself thinking what does he think he can see, the top was completely opaque then it occurred to me maybe he was wondering why can’t he see a damn thing, nets are supposed to be transparent.

Whatever, I think it’s not about clothes, I remember being stared at when I used to drive my scooty to work wearing summer coat, scarf that covers almost whole face and neck area, sunglasses to cover eyes, stalkings to cover feet, cotton gloves to cover arms. Even I could not recognize myself. But Men were still staring, again might be wondering why can’t they see a damn thing.

And few years back I had an upgrade and I started using the car to get to my workplace and now men peek through car window just because it’s a cinema and they got the balcony seat.

It is bad when you are being stared at by strangers and worse when you are being stared at by someone who you see on daily basis, with random strangers you at least don’t have to ignore the same person every day. But suppose you are at the gym or office and you notice someone who is constantly staring at you every day, you try to avoid the uneasy feeling by giving them a small smile and trust me this is the most unfortunate thing you would do. Don’t ever give a small smile to a creeper thinking that it would make them less creep, if you do that you are entering a series of very uncomfortable and meaningless conversations. You won’t be able to make head or tail of it.

Obviously, it has happened to me on several occasions but this one is quite recent. I started going to the gym and there was one man, who I found creepy since Day 1. He would just keep staring at me like he was a 3-year-old and I was Ice Pops. I thought maybe if I would return the smile, he would believe that I was real and would become less creepy.

That’s the most regrettable thing I have ever done. He still kept staring at me and now the stare was accompanied by series of infuriating questions – What’s your name? What do you do? Are you married? What do you eat in the morning? Why do you have a personal trainer? When finally, the interrogation stopped, he said to me the strangest thing. He said I think you are very fond of hair. I said, what’s that supposed to mean and he said this is my observation, you like long hair but your hair doesn’t grow fast.

I already had waist length hair. I didn’t know I was aspiring to be a middle-aged Rapunzel.

And finally, to the point, you already have great figure. And I was back to avoiding him. One day it was very difficult for me to ignore him, he took advantage of the situation and said – looks like you are angry about something. Well take the hint.

Now I am the one who is observing if he is anywhere near by, if he is, I bury myself in my phone.

Thousands of years of evolutions and still people can’t keep their shit to themselves.

Please just understand, you don’t say these kinds of things to someone who you are talking to for the first time. You should know that if the other person is ready to give you the consent to get personal or not?

Here is the thing we like getting complements, everyone does, but not in this creepy way. I will tell you what happens when we hear these kind of complements, it feels like you are living in someone else’s skin and both you and that someone else is feeling uncomfortable.

When you are a student, you don’t mind these things much because you are mostly surrounded by people of your own age or maybe you don’t have the sense to understand what is happening but when you are at a work place, things can go really weird because the age group you are surrounded by is quite diverse. I have been working at the same place for about 10 years now. When I first joined, I was younger so I was being stared at by seniors and peers, now I am older and being stared by seniors, peers and juniors. Anyway, Once I had to work at a different location for a couple of months for a project. Those were the most awkward couple of months of my life. I was mostly surrounded by Men and since I was there for only a short period of time, I did not want to interact much with them, but I didn’t know I would become such a mystery to them. If I shifted in my chair, they would stare at me, if I moved my head, they would stare at me, if they were talking to each other, they would stare at me, if someone was talking to me, they would stare at me, if they were having a private joke, they would stare at me. I spent the couple of months keeping my chair low, and head down all the time. I felt like I was some endangered species, locked in a zoo.

By staring you may think that you are appreciating how we look but it makes us less appreciate ourselves. If you want to appreciate us, just say the words but yeah...without being creepy. Because of all this ogling, now I have adapted a habit of ignoring everyone and I am pretty sure, I have lost at least a couple of good prospects because of my habit of ignoring everyone.

I guess we are all waiting for the day, when ogling would go out of fashion.

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