Expectations

This year, I got a new haircut. Half of my head is now shaved bald. I also wear almost exclusively black, eyeliner every day, and admittedly excessively tall heels. I've been called intimidating once or twice. Between the black nail polish and the newfound confidence, I find that people look at me differently than they used to. Especially coming back to San Diego, there's a big difference in what people expect of me. In Portland, I'm pretty much the norm. Of course, some people still stare a little bit or give me a once over, but nothing extreme. Here, it's a whole other story.
When I go into stores, employees follow me around because they're afraid I might steal something. The first time I realized this was happening, I got really upset. I've never stolen anything in my life, I've been a goody two shoes for most of my life. Just because I started cutting up my t shirts, suddenly I was a delinquent? At first I thought that this nice lady just wanted to see if I needed any help. But then I told her I was just looking, and she didn't move. She kept her eyes on me the entire time I was in the store, making sure to move around so that my hands were always in her line of sight. I understand that they don't want people to steal, and that kids do steal from stores, but it hurt to be stereotyped because of the way that I like to dress.
When I was getting food recently, the cashier looked frightened of me, and it felt like those movies where I had to joke, "don't worry, I don't bite." Why is that a trope? Why do we expect people with piercings and tattoos to be untrustworthy?
All my life people have trusted me. I was the one that parents wanted their kid to hang out with, because I was straight laced and did well in school. People could go to events because I was going, and their parents figured that I would do well in charge. I was in charge of a lot of things, and they all went well. People knew that I could handle it.
My eyeshadow changed from gold to black and my dresses turned to skinny jeans and tank tops. Now all of a sudden that trust that I was used to is going away. We shouldn't judge anyone because of what they choose to wear. Sure, your clothing can say a lot about you, but it doesn't have to. Sometimes people wear things simply because that's what they think looks good, and that shouldn't reflect negatively on them.
It makes me think of other expectations we have in this society. Why do we think people look sketchy, or good, or gay, or dumb, or nerdy, and why do we act differently around these people before even getting to know them?
I know we can't just blindly trust everyone, because it's naive to think that the world doesn't have untrustworthy people in it. But we can stop putting expectations on people because of the way that they look. We can be nice without letting our guard down completely.
Perhaps I just have to deal with being intimidating, and get over it. But it's really discouraging when you have to prove people's expectations wrong, especially when they have no reason to expect anything bad from you.

"High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation."-Charles Kettering

Expect more of people, not less. 

Understanding Pretty

I had a friend say to me recently "You think you're pretty, but you don't understand that you are." That thought really hit me. My whole life, parents have told me that I was beautiful. Of course I didn't believe them, because people my own age never thought so. When I was kissed for the first time, I was in high school. By then it had been a very long time since I'd thought I was pretty. For years after that first kiss I believed that I was average looking, and that I was lucky that certain people were attracted to me. Then I went through some serious self evaluation, and I realized that I could never be happy if I didn't love myself. So I went through a lot of work to believe a lot of positive things about myself.
Still, my physical appearance is the thing that I have the hardest time with. Believing that I am attractive has been and still is one of the biggest barriers that I face on my journey to true self love. I'm pretty. I get that now. I struggle with trying not to be conceited and also trying to be proud of how I look. But I can look at pictures of myself and look in the mirror and think "I'm attractive." I tell myself this over and over again, because I think a part of me just wants it to be true, and saying it enough will make it so. I work on looking good, to a certain extent, and I know that I don't look as good as a lot of other people do. I'm okay with that.
I don't understand that I'm pretty. I don't inherently believe that I am a desirable and attractive person. The evidence in my life just doesn't show that to me. But I do think that I'm pretty, I think that there are reasons why certain people may be attracted to me, and I can get certain things in life that pretty people can get.
The distinction my friend made may seem small, but it hit me like a truck. I had to sit there for a moment, not saying anything, and really digest that. Is it easy for people to see? That I don't understand my own attractiveness? I've seen it in books, people that don't get the extent of how attractive they are. I just never thought that I was one of those people.
Does this change how I see myself? Not really. I don't know if I'll ever understand that I'm pretty, I may have missed that opportunity in my life. It just makes me think about how I'm perceived. Do people see me as more attractive than I see myself? Does that change anything?
In some ways, I think it's sad. Because I see people that don't understand their own attractiveness. They battle with self esteem, just like I do, but they shouldn't, at least not in the physical looks department.
I'd like to say that I don't place a lot of importance on my looks. But I'm a nineteen year old girl, and I was brought up in a society where that mattered. I've always had really attractive friends, I still do, and so in comparing myself to them I never thought of myself as attractive. Now that I'm starting to, things feel different. Am I attractive? I don't know. I don't understand the few people that are attracted to me. But at least now I do think I'm pretty. If I think it hard enough, perhaps one day I'll believe it.

"Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." -Confucius