No, I Don’t Care if You Find Me Hot
How I Stopped Caring What Men Think of Me and Finally Feel Free
Like many women in America, I spent much of my young life worrying about what the men or boys around me thought of me. I was called boy-crazy on more than one occasion during my school days. I’d had more obsessive crushes than years by the time I was 10. That trend would continue for a few more years with a new boy striking my fancy every few months and my entire vision of myself morphing based on what I thought they thought of me.
I’d be in tears day after day, especially in middle school, over the fact that the boy I liked didn’t seem to look at me twice. If I wasn’t thought of as “one of the boys” by him, I was his confidant for his crushes on my friends, always being asked if I could put in a good word for him.
By the time I reached high school, I was so used to this that I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a boy actually liked me when it finally did happen. My first instinct was that his flirting was a prank thought up by his friends. By the time I came to believe he might like me, his gaze had moved on. I was devastated that I’d lost my chance with him, but more that the situation forced me to realize just how low my self-esteem was.
I couldn’t fathom a cute guy expressing interest in me for any non-malicious reason.
That moment was a turning point into a downward spiral for me. I went from having been rejected so many times that I didn’t believe in any male affection toward me to seeking it out from unworthy sources very quickly. And once I had the attention of a man, I clung to it with everything I had. During each bad relationship, I was convinced that it was my last chance to be “loved.” Despite that “love” being a far cry from anything I’d ever imagined or hoped for myself, I held onto those relationships like they were lifelines to the life I wanted. One where I felt loved, respected, desired, and appreciated, despite getting basically none of those things from the men I was with.
After those few years of back to back boyfriends and dates, I was single for two years. And when I say single, I mean completely single. No dates, no kisses, no dating apps, nothing. I’d been emotionally wrung out and couldn’t take any more.
I spent those two years attempting to get back to myself. I’d learned a lot through those relationships and had a different kind of confidence than when I was 16. I’d developed new skills, a new confidence, but I also knew some dark truths and had become jaded.
Almost two years to the day into singlehood, I was working in Los Angeles and finally felt ready to dip my toes back in the dating pool. In some ways, the situationship I found myself in then was worse than all the others, not only because of the way he treated me, but because of the way I let myself get sucked in, again. I was convinced that finally, finally, I had found a good one and could maybe build something worthwhile with him, or at the very least be respected and appreciated while having some fun. Even after all that healing, I was still so naive.
With my very rudimentary knowledge of gaming gleaned from my first boyfriend, I always say dating is similar to playing video games. Once you develop the necessary skills to conquer one round, the next boss is going to throw something totally different at you.
Gone were the immature boys with deep insecurities and anger issues. I’d never fall for their shit again. But they were replaced by the seemingly sweet, well-educated, manipulative as hell “nice guy.” The one who knew how to say and do all the right things so I wouldn’t realize he was sleeping with several people behind my back. That situation lasted about six months and then came another 2 year bout of single-hood while I recovered from it (and we all attempted to survive a pandemic).
If any of this sounds familiar - the boy craziness, the desire to appeal to men in general to validate your worth, the running theme of being treated like shit in every relationship you’ve been in but still clinging to it anyway - then you could probably use a good dose of not giving a shit what men think. Let me tell you how I got to that point.
In the two years since being cheated on, not only did I try to heal from that betrayal and yet another blow to my idea of what relationships could be, but I finally started to find myself. Swearing off dating for a while and not interacting with men basically at all will do wonders for your mental health and ability to get in touch with who you are.
I was intentional about wanting to take a break from dating before the pandemic hit, but when COVID-19 did hit, it only cemented my ability to remove myself from the dating game. Knowing I wasn’t going to be around men often, let alone try to attract any, I was able to get more in touch with myself than I ever had before.
I spent a lot of time on social media, slowly but surely curating my feeds to inundate me with things I thought were beautiful or inspiring or interesting. I found incredibly cool and quirky women to follow. I watched movies that I liked, rather than movies that might make a man “pick me” if he knew I liked them. I got back into reading books I liked over ones that might sound impressive (even though I still adore the classics). I developed my own sense of style that wasn’t so fully wrapped up in what men like and started wearing clothes that made me feel comfortable and felt like they represented who I was as a person.
Reflecting on my previous relationships and entanglements with men, I realized that so much of what I did was crafted to appeal to them. I did it all in the hopes of finding something real, but it only led me to frustration, abuse, and heartbreak. I haven’t completely lost hope for finding something real, but my desire to bend to the will of men or spend my precious energy trying to appeal to them as a whole has completely dissolved. I’ve found so much peace in the years I’ve been single, and even so, I know I’m still at the beginning stages of learning about myself and healing old wounds and self-destructive tendencies.
One thing that has made space for this healing is becoming comfortable in my own skin. I no longer wear too-tight or too-revealing clothes in the hopes of attracting the eye of any random guy. I don’t walk around sucking in my stomach or trying to perfect a smize or demure laugh.
I try my best to do what feels right for me every second of every day.
I’m not perfect at it, but even trying has been a joy. Part of that was the freedom afforded by isolation during the pandemic. I didn’t need to shave or do my makeup or even shower as often as I would if I were going out in the world every day. I became extremely comfortable with my body, its cycles and rhythms, and my natural features, and my own needs and wants.
The veneer of feminine performance crumbled away and I can’t see myself ever putting it back on again.
Glass door art installation at the deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum.
There’s nothing I would trade for the freedom of not giving a shit what Joe Schmoe at the grocery store thinks of me and not wasting my precious time trying to morph myself into his ideal. It’s a bit like that quote by Michelle Obama when asked by Oprah Winfrey whether it’s intimidating to be in rooms with a lot of smart men. She responded, “You realize pretty quickly that a lot of them aren’t that smart.”
Once you realize that you don’t need to put men on a pedestal, there’s no need to glorify them or their opinions, no need to defer to them as the defacto judges of taste or value, you stop caring what they think of you. Sure, you might still value the opinions of some men you know and admire or are attracted to, but the chokehold that the need to appeal to men at large has on most women can disappear.
Rather than moving through the world offering yourself up for consumption by any man you might come across, you start to occupy it as your own sovereign person.
Do I still want to appeal to men I find interesting and attractive? Sure. But the number of men who fit that bill is infinitesimal compared to the number of men I come across each and every day. And the beauty of that is that if a man were to be put off by the way I choose to exist in public, he’s not likely to be someone I’d get along with anyway. His opinion then ceases to matter to me. It’s profoundly liberating.
This may be old news to some, especially to those who occupy a place in the world that’s often treated with derision by cishet men at large and have done the work to pave the way for showing up in the world as your authentic self (think gay men, masc lesbians, and non-binary folks). But for me, a straight white woman steeped in the culture of appealing to men at all costs despite my liberal, feminist education, this feels like a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders.
If you want a taste of this freedom and feel like you’re in a safe enough space to give it a try, I recommend doing the following things:
Challenge yourself to go out without spending the same amount of effort as you normally do trying to look good for men.
Again, you don’t need to go out looking like a mess, but try wearing less makeup (or none), more comfortable clothes, or leaving your hair its natural texture rather than curling or straightening it. Start with small changes if it’s scary! I used to need to wear almost a full face of makeup to go to the grocery store and now I spend most of my time in public with a completely bare face. I didn’t get here by going cold turkey!
When you go shopping for clothes, makeup, whatever, try to focus on what appeals to you, not what you think would catch the eye of men. If that’s bright colors and intricate patterns, go for it! If it’s more modest necklines or looser clothes, try it out! If it’s dark lipstick or vibrant eyeliner, give it a go!
One of my favorite things to do when I’m feeling self-conscious (and this is where I might teeter on the line of misandry), is to do a mental takedown of the men I’m encountering in that space. Usually it involves laughing to myself at their transparent bravado, taking an honest look at the questionable clothing and grooming choices they’ve made, or listening to them speak and reaffirming that no, they are not someone whose opinion matters to me in the slightest. It helps push away those learned feelings of needing to be appealing at all times. In some cases being judgemental of others can cause us to judge ourselves more harshly, but I find this is rarely the case when I do it to men.
When you start doing these things and getting acquainted with who you are outside of trying to appeal to the male gaze, your confidence will likely skyrocket.
Soon, this attitude will seep into other areas of your life besides how you present yourself in public. You’ll become choosier when swiping on dating apps. When you post something online and inevitably get men disagreeing with and most likely bullying you, you just won’t give a shit because their words mean nothing. You’ll start to pick up new interests and hobbies and generally become a more vibrant, happy person.
If you want to explore letting go of caring about what men think and try some of these things, let me know how it goes in the comments! If you’re already in the process or have come to not care if they are attracted to you, what tips would you add? What was your experience of that process like? I’d love to know!
