Women Who Try To Humble Me Because I’m Beautiful

I’d like to talk about my experiences with women who try to humble me because I’m beautiful. 

In this case, I am specifically referring to women who I have turned to as a source of allyship to share that I’ve experienced unwanted attention from a man—often right after it has happened under her nose—in the hopes that she will understand, relate to me, and empathize. In the hopes that I will find solidarity. 

But instead, I am slapped in the face with some petty reason as to why this man could not possibly be attracted to me.

Insinuating that I must be utterly delusional to think that I’m such hot shit, and to have the audacity to assume that I would be the object of desire by said man. 

Suggesting that my feelings and intuition are simply false. 

They leave me out in the cold, their words forming a seed of insecurity and self-doubt that I thankfully know how to brush off, rather than allowing it to germinate. 

For further context, I am speaking exclusively about my experiences with white people. White women who are gaslighting me, about receiving a little too much attention from white men. 

Although this type of behavior is not by any means exclusive to any particular race or sex, it just so happens that these particular experiences have been with white women. So that’s what I will be talking about. 

And I do feel that the racial component adds an extra layer of charge to the matter, because black women like me are not “supposed” to be beautiful, desired, or admired by anybody—especially not by white men. 

For the record, Yes, I do think I’m beautiful, inside and out. That is why I’m able to own my experiences and speak about them with clarity, instead of being “humbled” into silence. 

So I’d like to share a couple of my stories in-depth, and what I make of them. 

It’s still taboo for women to talk about our beauty— to own it for ourselves. It is something we are conditioned to wait for others to bestow upon us. Because it is in the eye of the beholder, some people will try to make you see yourself in the ugly way they see themselves. 

I want to flip the conversation of “pretty privilege” on its head for a moment and speak from an alternate perspective—of how male-centered women can throw each other under the bus when they feel jealous or threatened by other women’s beauty and the status that it brings. 

I also want to share what beauty means for me, how I’ve learned to embrace it as I’ve grown into my self-worth, and what I have learned from my experiences in connection with other women.