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It’s amazing what stories and messages from our childhood stay with us. My mother was raised Seventh Day Adventist and went to school at Oakwood College, a Seventh Day Adventist school. Needless to say the professors and much of the environment was conservative. Behavior, especially the behavior of the female students, was policed.
When I was younger my mother used to tell my sister and I this story of a professor who lost her mind when a female student entered her classroom wearing tight pants without a shirt covering her bottom.
The professor shouted some type of interjection like a pained “Ooo” before running to the chalkboard. Once she got there she exclaimed “Shabby Moose” before drawing the girl’s behind on the chalkboard for all of her classmates to see.
Years after she’d graduated college, married and had children, my mother still didn’t know what Shabby Moose meant. What she did know was that that day left an indelible mark on her and she was, for many years, very subconscious about wearing tight pants without a shirt that covered her behind. And I know I adopted the mindset too.
Not so much because I feared being called out by an overzealous professor or older woman but more so because men tended to lose their minds when women wear leggings without a blousy shirt. And my behind doesn’t need any additional help in attracting attention. In an ideal world, the thoughts, stares and even comments from a few classless men wouldn’t affect my fashion choices. But in the real world, I often want to go as unnoticed and un-assaulted as possible.
I recently heard a story that seemed to affirm my decision.
My boyfriend works at a school and he said that after the snowstorm a lot of the teachers and administrators were coming in more casually dressed than usual. The principal wore leggings without a big enough shirt. And one of the male teachers saw her. And instead of keeping the sight to himself or God forbid, looking away, he went running into my boyfriend’s classroom to not only tell him about what he’d just witnessed but to encourage him to “Hurry and check it out for himself.”
Ugh!
It’s a shame people don’t know how to tuck their incessant sexual urges in.
It would be nice if women could be covered and comfortable without having to worry that her body will be oogled by a man who can’t seem to control himself, even at work.
I anxiously await the day when men learn to grow up.
But until that day comes, some of us have chosen to take extra precautions while others of us are just doing our thing, not concerned about these immature men. Which type of woman are you?
