Do people stare at you? (Prolonged)

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People stare at my hair.

[img][800:768]http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l549/onezumiyoukai/001.jpg[/img]

In the winter they also stare at my cute raccoon hat. Strangers sometimes make comments about both.

Hanyo, I love your raccoon hat! Did it get an eye poked out? :O

People stare a lot at me, cause I'm a purebred weirdo. It used to bother me a lot, but I more or less accepted my weirdness a few years ago and it doesn't bother me anymore.

I've always been a starer as well, because drawing humans was my #1 interest between ages 6-18. When I see an unusually shaped human, I stare at them until I have their geometry committed to memory.

I just learned a couple years ago that this creeps people out, that the human being stared tends to infer that I am objectifying them sexually or marking them as a target for violence. Now I feel really guilty about it when I catch myself doing it. Hard habit to break, having been burned in to my behavior for, oh, 30 some years.

Well I have sort of figured out the reason why I get odd looks. It's because I must look like the mother of Shannon Mattews. I have that bland unnattractive hairstyle too and the same colour hair and the same pale grouchy face. So people must see me in the corner of their eye and it must be vital for them to look, to see if I am her or not. That's the only possible answer I have come up with.

When I'm sitting on the bus, I get people on the street looking at me through the window, even though I know I don't gawp out, I just have my head facing forwards but just move my eyes slightly to the window so I can see out onto the street, and I just catch people staring through the window at me. They're probably just thinking, ''oh I might have seen that Shannon Mattew's mother on the bus.'' It hurts me a great deal.

Yesterday I went out with my hair different. I partened it at the side so I had it coming across, then put 2 clips at the side, and I looked very attractive in the mirror, and didn't even look myself (a slight change in hairstyle can actually make a difference). I didn't look like this woman at all, and also I felt my facial muscles were pulled back a bit, because of having my hair supported with a clips, instead of hanging loosely down by my ears. But unfortunately people still stared funny, even though I looked really nice and it even took the unnattractive expression I give off, so maybe it's not because I look like Shannon Mathew's mother at all.

I'm still trying to look into it. And I've found out it's not my body language or anything, because when I last went to my Job Experience course, my personal advisor said that I didn't need to have interview practice because she said I gave off good body language and normal eye contact, etc, when I first walked in the door and spoke to her (which was similar to a job interview), which made me feel happier in myself.

So I'm still looking into why people give me odd looks. It's no good asking people because I would just end up looking like a fool. I've just got to find out for myself.

i try not to notice

There is no such thing as 'vibes' and 'the wrong body language'. Nobody's perfect. People just look at eachother all the time, its a natural thing. If you're not doing anything notable to catch anyones attention then why would you be singled out and stared at? I'm neurotypical but I don't stare at people who aren't doing anything different. I just see them and if I am looking at their eyes it doesnt mean I'm thinking anything about the person. Eyes are like magnets, sometimes you cant always help keep catching a person's eye and vice versa.

No, there's the possibility I'm too oblivious to notice, though.

As I got older and tougher, my sorta thought process in public got to be more like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uq73PZ4nzE
(Boondocks clip of Ed Wuncler)

"The f**k yall lookin' at?!"

Yes.

I thought it was in my head or that people just stare at each other that way, but now that you say that your friend says you give off a different presence I know exactly what you mean and Ihave that same thing.

e_e

Yer well I get told by everyone I know that I ''look normal'' and don't ''look unusual'' at all. And I'm not going to listen to people who say ''NTs lie all the time so they're probably just saying that'' because that doesn't work on me, and I trust my own family and they know how self-conscious I am and how much I hate looking different so they would love to help me if I did do something notable. Well they have done it before a couple of years ago, when I used to talk louder than I needed to. My mum and my auntie said, ''just speak a bit quieter'', and I said, ''but other people speak loudly'' and they just said, ''yeah but if you want to say something what you don't want others to hear then you say it a bit quieter.'' So from then on I learnt that I should say things more quiter, and now I do.

My grandmother is very uncool now. She has Alzheimer's, and my mum says that she's an embarrassment to take out. She shouts inappropriate things out loud, and doesn't look where she's going, and just has other unusual body language that draws attention. I never do anything like that.

The ONLY reason why I get people looking at me is because I look like Shannon Mathew's mother. Nobody's told me, but it's what I've figured out for myself.

If you meet their eye, they'll usually stop staring.
Accompany it with a smile, if you sense they were genuinely just looking, as opposed to glaring in an intrusive way.

Heck, ask them for some spare change while you're at it. They look away real quick, then. Either that, or you make a little extra money.

I wear that kind of stuff sometimes (except replace camoflauge pants with black skinny jeans). Yeah, people in the store stare at me with a nervous glance. A cashier might speak cheerfully to the shopper ahead of me, but when it's my turn to pay for my stuff, their cheerfulness is... gone. And if I don't wear clothes like that (say, a hoodie with blue jeans) it's mostly little kids who stare at me. There isn't a time where I can go to the store and not have kids stare at me. Makes me feel like I'm some kind of perv or child molester (but I would never do such a thing!).

I wear stylish clothes, and I don't come from a snobby place either. Where I come from, there is a mixture of types of people, so I don't see how I can stand out. I consider myself as just an average person, I'm not snanky or simple or snobby or rough or anything like that. About 65 percent of people are just average around where I come from. So even if I did look different in some sort of way, I still wouldn't really stand out because 45 percent are not-so-average, if you know what I mean.

I'm just some young girl, wearing stylish clothes and walking up straight with a trendy handbag over her shoulder, nice and slim and attractive. I'm not really anything to laugh about. I am just another stranger to people. I am just a person they don't know. There is no reason to look, unless I do something what does attract attention, which I know I don't.

That's two reasons for people to stare at you right there. To objectify you if they think you may be an available breeding partner, or in jeasously if they think your attractiveness will compete with their efforts to find an available breeding partner.

This sounds like a good thing then. All this time I've always been afraid that people are staring because there is something wrong with me on the outside, but if people can help me look at good points as to why they might be staring, then it will help with my self-esteem.

Well I'm pretty normal in public. I don't have meltdowns from loud noises, or flap my hands, or talk to myself, or anything like that what may appear out of the ordinary to other people. The most I do what may catch other people's eye is if somebody stands right in my space I tut and walk away. But that's not really that noticable. Sometimes I wish I hadn't made it obvious that I'm agitated, but sometimes I can't always help myself at the time. I probably have more self-control than what I think. So I'm self-aware enough to know what's noticable and what isn't. This is why I get disturbed when people look at me - it's because I know that I have as much self-awareness as the average NT, and that I know I don't do anything notable, and that I have learnt to not lose my cool because I am not 10 years old any more. So I just don't know why it is so vital for everybody passing to stare and even turn their head towards me as I pass, as though their eyes get fixed on me and can't take them off me. I take it as a form of harrassment. I even wear stylish clothes, because they say that sometimes the clothes you wear can give off more of expression of who you are. That is why they want you to wear formal clothes for interviews, it's so that you give off more of a proffessional vibe. So for every day wear, I wear fashionable things what make me just blend in with the rest, and I thought that'd give off a better expression of myself and to give off a ''I care about my appearence'' vibe. Today I wore my beige coat with a hood which I brought from a fashion shop what all the girls of my age are wearing, (which I look really trendy and even older in), and my skinny jeans (what is in fashion), and my boots (which is fashionable aswell). I didn't even feel myself when I was wearing them, even my auntie said she hardly recognised me. So, don't say ''oh you must look odd in some way'' because I just know I don't. If someone here was to hang out with me for a day, you will know what I'm talking about.

See, this is what you get when you're too close to normal. You're aware of what's going on around you and you are sensitive to criticism, rejection and humiliation, and so you subconsciously try to avoid negative attention when you go out (which is pretty normal in humans and so you, as an Aspie who finds fitting in a little harder than average people, are unlucky enough to have this trait), and so any little vibe you may give off (possibly nervousness) seems to draw attention. f**k knows why, but it does. I mean, walking through a street to get something in a shop ain't always a choice, and we don't go walking out to the shops to compete in a ''I'm-better-than-you'' compitition, but there you are - people (especially women) never grow up. I thought all this sh** was just in secondary school but it seems worse than seconary school. I expect maybe a little ''I'm-better-than-you'' compitition going on at a social party with lots of youngsters all dolled up, but not just walking down the street to a shop - where you're likely to meet all sorts of different types of people. For f**k sake!

People tell me that it is my imagination, but it just feels so real. When people pass, I look straight ahead, but in the corner of my eye I am so sure that I see their faces turn towards me as though they are staring. When I'm sitting in the bus and it drives by pedestrians who are walking, I still get a feeling that they've seen me out of everybody else and are staring in at me. Today when the bus stopped at a bus stop, there was a big crowd of big schoolkids on the other side of the road, and although I sat still with my eyes staring straight ahead and making out to them that I haven't seen them (I had my iPod on too), I still kept thinking that the whole crowd was looking at me and saying, ''you see that girl in the third window from the front? What a freak!'' Even though I KNEW I couldn't be more like everybody else on that bus if I tried. There was a fat girl sitting behind me with ginger hair sprawled out everywhere, and although I don't see anything funny in that, teenagers might, but I bet they were still targeting me.

WhatamIgonnado??????! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!
I may give off a vibe.....but I didn't know it was THAT obvious, over millions of other different types of people??? Jesus, there are more people out there who are far more obvious than I do, whom I even would laugh at.