Why does society make it so much work to be a woman?!

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Let's try to curb the bickering please. Otherwise, this topic will be locked.

I haven't worn makeup in years due to being distracted by co-morbids which left me not caring about my appearance. Well, I'm doing a bit better now (due to a successful combination of chemicals and reflective thinking.) Long story short, I have decided to go to a job fair tomorrow for the university's hospitality staff (ie cashiering.) I've done customer service/cash before and I'm aware that the appearance of the cashier is important. With this in mind I intend to put on makeup to go to the job fair. And should I be successful, will continue to do so while working.

I like the artistry of makeup and I am starting to take a little bit more interest in my appearance. But for me it's a matter of practicality ... I invariably end up smudging mascara under my eyes or my lipstick ends up on my nose. And as far as clothes go, I am so sensitive to rough fibres, I am limited and hate uniforms.

I am incapable of pulling an outfit together and will spill something on myself within 1/2 hour guaranteed and am sometimes envious of women who have it together and look sharp.

Why is it that the abusive and hypocritical posts by one member are still here one page back, but my posts calling them out on it are removed, again? It's really starting to look like members of the mod team are going out of their way to protect a difficult member who consistently causes drama because they share politics with them, and that is simply unacceptable.

Well I tried.

The personal grievances on this site are getting out of control. I think it's the heat.

It is true, both men and women pressure men and women to conform to gender roles, and as autistic people we all suffer trying and failing to conform to those standards and it is harmful, that pressure. The fact that so much of our perceived value as females relates to how we visually present ourselves (including wearing makeup and how we wear our hair and nails and how we dress) creates this insane amount of pressure to look a certain way or to be deemed invisible and irrelevant, and choosing to wear makeup to survive a day without having people shout things like "dyke!" at you on the street (yeah, this has happened to me before many times, when I used to present more masculinely) doesn't feel like much of a choice but simply a survival mechanism. If you're doing it to prevent overt and frightening (because it usually happens when I am alone and I don't know if the person is going to be happy with just shouting at me and might try something else like following me or attacking me) harassment or simply so the people you speak to in a day will actually take you seriously and listen to what you say, it really doesn't feel like much of a choice.

I would like to be free of makeup (and the sensory issues inherent with wearing makeup, like the sensation of something sticky/slimey/powdery constantly on my skin that i can't wash off until get home at the end of the day, and not being able to touch my face without getting makeup on my hands which I then have to wash and have to retouch the makeup to fix it) , but I would not like to go back to having to defend myself against or flee harassment in public, so I wear the goddamned makeup so people will leave me the hell alone. Yay choice!

I'm a man, and I pluck my eyebrows. I even pluck my nosehairs. I dream of one day being able to afford braces to close this vicious gap in my teeth. Not to mention further whitening, perhaps a veneer. I will also need to remove the puffyness around my eyes, which seems natural from what I can tell? Something about my condition gives me a unique set of eyes, and eyelids, and I've seen a few others with my condition who share that sort of "full look" around the eyelids. Frankly, I creep myself out when I smile, because my smile looks like somebody took a baseball bat to my face, and gave up mid-way. I am still about ten-grand behind in fixing my face. So, I guess, be glad that it's not just women? Don't get me started on male baldness - and how SOME male baldness is absolutely smoldering hot, especially when it starts in the early twenties around the front of the hairline. Or why bald men get so many dates, and still claim to have mangled self-esteem because of it? No idea how this works, but I'm glad I still have a hairline. Sadly, it doesn't cause the dates to line up around the block for me. I'm age thirty-five, and I still have the boyish look. I don't think any plastic surgery can fix that.

Where do you live that people are this overtly aggressive?

For me its always women who communicate an issue with how I look, I think its important though to not allow this to feed self hatred.

I have a large, showy, designer watch I wear for this purpose. It's a statement piece. The statement is "I may be an expressionless weirdo who won't look you in the face, but I have a watch that is girly and expensive, so don't be a total azz to me".

It would be even more "showy" if the numbers were Roman Numerals.

I think that's cool, actually.

I live in Canada, in a small-to-midsized city one could probably equate with American "suburbia". I think it happened to me as much as it did when I presented more masculine because I was almost always alone when I was out in public, and being alone makes you much more likely to be targeted by the sort of people (or often, groups of people because they are extra emboldened when they have numbers and you are alone) who will shout horrible things at strangers on the street because they are cowards and will exploit that vulnerability if they feel they can do so safely and get away with it. All it takes is to have one more person with you, and people will generally leave you alone--but if you are out by yourself whenever you are out, and you look unusual/nonconforming in some way, the sort of people who do that s**t will notice you and your vulnerability. That is just the nature of many bullies, they are essentially opportunistic cowards.

ETA: None of this makes me hate myself, if that's what you were worried about. I like who I am (minus small acquiescences like wearing makeup for the sake of less harassment) just fine, and when people say stuff like that to me it hurts, but not for the reason most people think: it hurts me that a stranger would want to hurt or shame me publicly because of their own insecurities and issues with self-worth, that they chose to deal with their own problems by hurting me. It makes me sad, sad for them that they would do that and no one ever taught them any better than that or they are incapable of being better than that. But it doesn't make me believe what they say about me, because I know what they are shouting at me is much more about them and their own issues with themselves than it is about me and how I look. I feel sad that they need to express hatred for a stranger because of their own pain, but I don't believe their hatred and I don't internalise it because I understand it is irrational and not about me.

So much yes. And in subtler ways, as well. I get a lot of store employees pretending to rearrange shelves near me when I'm on my own. I'm quite shifty-looking, apparently. Oh, and the other week a kiosk vendor tried to hand me something in a mall, and I said 'no thanks' and she shouted down the corridor after me that I should smile.

Same.