Bird-Watching For The Birds

I don’t like being stared at. I’m not a particularly pretty bouquet or a magnificent painting. I want to be seen but not STARED at, unabashedly. It makes me uncomfortable and in some situations it makes me feel like a thing…a sex object yes, but also one with no intrinsic value whatsoever but my stareability quotient. This horrible habit has been termed ‘Bird-watching’ by some Alec Smarts.

I’ve taken to staring back. It unnerves most starers since they don’t know how to react when an objectified subject turns around and objectifies them. Recently I was walking around near my office, talking on the phone. I was wearing a pair of new knee-high leather boots with a smart skirt-shirt-beret outfit and verbally preening about it to my friend on the phone. My conversation went something like this:

Yeah, I finally got that pair yesterday evening! And I’m wearing them today…..I never realised new shoes could give you such a high! Drat, there is a guy staring at me like I’m an alien. Hmph….stare, stare, stare. I hope he falls off his bike!

What did happen was that I was so busy glaring back that I missed a step and tumbled over myself. So much for grace and glamour. Hmph.

But if this story had to go my way, I’d have stared back coolly at the man. If he was really attractive, I would probably have winked at him (no actually I wouldn’t…I’m chicken that way…but for the sake of argument if I could, I would). Enough till he fell off his bike. It’d serve him right.

Another time, I was out on a date with someone who was checking out other women. Bad manners, bad manners but who was going to tell him that? Certainly not me. What I did instead was turn around and join him. He was actively engaged in an open-mouthed appreciation of the visions on FTV. So I joined him in grading them on figure, poise, style and expression. He gave up after a while. Hehe, men are naturally competitive but dahling, who’d know more about a woman than another woman?

Incidentally this person, on hearing the first story commented that I had a grin of ‘pure, undisguised evil glee’. He has now taken to introducing me to everyone as Ideasmith, a totally mad woman.

Uh, huh, just so long as you don’t stare. The paparazzi can take their photographs now.