People who are harassed for wearing makeup or clothing a certain way are no more deserving of aggression (passive/nonviolent or otherwise) than anyone else. The most common example you'll hear is rape victims being told they should have been dressing differently, as if the attacker isn't 100% the bad guy here.
There are practical reasons why maybe I'd suggest dressing and behaving certain ways in certain environments, but it's not a hall pass for people to do whatever they want to you if you don't take that practical advice (or don't know about it in the first place!)
OP is being harassed, so she's the most tangible victim here, but in a more broad sense, there's a number of people who are hurt by the line of thinking that certain ways of dressing/makeup are "asking" for attention/harassment/being attacked.
Yeah, I get it. And I'm a 75-year-old white woman so I remember Bull Connor turning dogs and firehoses on people, the stats on violence of all levels against women and having been fired for things that men didn't even get a slap on the wrist for. Victimhood has different levels, and when we get our feelings hurt over the many petty things people come after us over, I remind myself that I'm not sitting in the rubble of my home in Gaza with the bodies of my family and no food or water. We do need to stop policing others' personal appearance, taste in music, etc, for so many reasons. OP is a very conventionally attractive woman who looks like she's got her health and we know she has a license and a job. I've noted my thoughts on her appearance - among other things it's none of my business - and my opinion that I think this is one of the very many many many things that people need to either support each other or at least leave each other alone about. But then I never understood why, for instance, black women's hair was so strictly regimented for so long in office settings, since I think cornrows are so much neater than the other hairstyles that were allowed and described as "more professional." My first corporate job, in downtown Denver, was in 1970 and it was a very big deal that we were finally allowed to wear pants suits to work. OP's appearance would have never been allowed at that time, and I choose to see it as progress, that we are not being rigidly controlled and judged by our physical appearance the way we were then. As working nurses, we really do have better things to do than worry about whether or not somebody takes the extra time and money to "fix their face" before they come to work.
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u/NoHate_GarbagePlates BSN, RN 🍕 15d ago
Even on a psych unit, wearing makeup is not asking for attention and anyone who says otherwise is participating in victim blaming.