I have been blessed with two young stepdaughters. The youngest likes to play the game, Would you rather? If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a really fun, simple game for all ages, with limitless possibilities. An example would be, “Would you rather have the ability to talk to plants or animals?” (Animals all the fucking way!)

In the midst of one such game, she asked me, “Would you rather be beautiful or smart?” I couldn’t get “Smart” out of my mouth fast enough. When I turned the question to her, I expected the same momentum behind her answering, “Smart of course!” Instead she paused and thought. Incredulous, I asked, “Are you actually pondering that question?”

She craves my approval, but she isn’t afraid to constantly disagree with me. I thought perhaps she was trying to figure out how to get my goat until she cautiously said, “It seems like beauty is much more valuable than being smart.”

Oh shit. She was serious.

I had no idea how to handle that moment. I had a hundred sarcastic comments fill my thoughts, fifty criticisms, and at least twenty quotes from prominent feminists. But rather than say any of those things in critique of my vulnerable little girl, I remembered a time when I, too, thought that beauty surpassed everything else in life.

When I was twenty-one years old, I was stunning. There was rarely a time when I would walk into a room without every head turning… both men and women. I got so used to it, I didn’t even notice that I was noticing. But being that beautiful came with a lot of pitfalls, too. First, it turned me into a bat signal for predators. Men often leered at me like hungry wolves eyeing an injured calf. Sometimes the animalistic desire was so obvious, it made everyone seeing the transgression incredibly uncomfortable.  Unfortunately I didn’t have the backbone I have now. I wasn’t strong, and I was wrought with daddy issues.

My father exited my life when I was nine years old, soon after learning that I had been molested… numerous times by numerous boys. That knowledge was not entirely what fueled his exit, but the timing couldn’t have been worse for my internalization. I don’t think he blamed me; he just didn’t know what to do with the information, and in the midst of a stormy divorce, it became clear that he was just too mild to fight for me, or for his family.

In college, I waited tables in fine dining restaurants, where rich patrons would bloat on filets and red wine. There was rarely a night when I wasn’t verbally harassed, cornered, and even groped.

You have to remember that this was before #MeToo, so it was just something that I learned to live with. It was the 1990s, and society was utterly bombarded with women being sexualized and objectified.

I will never forget walking into the library at the University of Kentucky, where I was a student. At the main entrance was a magazine rack. On the cover of the issue of Rolling Stone was Britney Spears lying on silk sheets, wearing the bare minimum to be on a cover: a tiny bra and even tinier shorts.

Okay… Playboy was a beacon of class at that time, for fuck’s sake. I was used to seeing gorgeous, half-naked women everywhere I turned. But what stopped me in my tracks was the fact that Britney clutched a purple Teletubby in her arm next to a headline that read, “Inside the heart, mind, and bedroom of a teen dream.”

The Rolling Stone cover before that issue had featured Jimi Hendrix riding on a guitar. The cover after, a photo of Eminem from the neck up, wearing headphones. Britney’s cover made it clear that the elixir of innocent female youth was now the accepted fountain every pervert wanted to dip their chalice into.

It gave permission for men to increase bad behavior. In generations before, women had been sexualized, sure. But more than anything, women were widely dismissed or put in their place. Most of the magazine covers before the ’90s were of a different perversion, relegating women to housewives or only showing white women as models.

This was the first time I remember being deeply disturbed by a magazine cover, and wondering how this would affect society. It didn’t take long for me to get my answer.

A couple of months after Britney’s Rolling Stone cover, I had an encounter with a very aggressive male patron at the restaurant. The occurrence left me shaken, and I asked the maître d’ how to handle the situation. His advice was, “Hey, that should make you feel really good about yourself. He only does that to the prettiest ones.”

And so it was.

Harassment became… flattering. Rather than fight it, I adapted. I became attracted to the Tony Sopranos of the world. I craved attention from wealthy, powerful men. My self-esteem was so steeped in vanity, it became insulting NOT to be exploited. And always looming in the background, like fog on a chilled field, were the charming daddy and abandonment issues.

For me, another drawback to beauty was that women immediately disliked and distrusted me. As much as a man would size me up, a woman would size me down. It made me feel combative and insecure.  This was a time when women were looking at each other from head to toe, measuring their appearance, rather than immediately supporting each other. It would take twenty years before women would truly link arms and support each other in fighting sleaze.

Another downfall to beauty was that it was often assumed, by both men and women, that when I opened my mouth I would prove myself completely void of an intelligent statement. One evening, at a dinner I had been invited to attend as one of the only females, I remember correcting a man about the stock market’s history. Under the table, he grabbed the inside of my knee so tightly, it felt like a mule had clamped down on my leg. He leaned close to me and bit out through gritted teeth, “That’s not what you’re here for.” In other words, shut the fuck up and look pretty.

I learned how to navigate shark-infested waters, but I did it through a lot of avoidance. I wasn’t prepared to experience the backlash that would come with standing up for myself.

When I met my stepdaughters, the ship had sailed on my turning every head in the room. But I began to notice heads turning in their direction, which made me feel fiercely protective. If I caught a man looking at one of my girls, I would stare them down, practically begging them to do or say something so that I could take a chunk out of their ego.

So you can’t imagine how giddy I was when I saw a video in 2018 of a young female server delivering a smackdown on a man who had grabbed her ass as he walked by her. She was standing at a serving station, about to put an order into the computer, when the man walked behind her and grabbed her ass. It was brief—the video has to be played in slow motion to truly see what this man does—but his violation is nonetheless clear. I’ve been in her shoes numerous times. I always froze, trying to process if I was really feeling what I was feeling.

But this woman… she didn’t freeze. She didn’t hesitate in the least. She didn’t wait for him to almost make it out the front door. The man was still in arm’s reach when she grabbed the back of his shirt, threw an arm around his neck, and flung him into a chair behind her. Then she proceeded to give him one hell of a lecture.  I remember watching the video twenty times over, tears welling in my eyes.

She didn’t pause. She didn’t falter. She didn’t go numb. She immediately trusted her body. She knew what she felt. She knew it was wrong and she took matters into her own hands. Maybe she remembered there was a camera filming, but she didn’t rely on that. She didn’t wait to prosecute later. She took matters into her own hands and she took control of the narrative. She didn’t wait for a man to see and take over. She was tiny, but mighty. She was… incredible.

I played the video for my girls over and over. They weren’t as… awestruck as I was, I’m sure, because they didn’t have the history that I have. But that made me feel even better. I have done everything in my power to let my girls know that no harassment is flattering. It isn’t even acceptable. We are so used to shaking our heads and saying, “In this day and age,” with such negative connotations. We’re prone to think that things have changed for the worse and we are all on a fast track to hellish circumstances. I’m not prone to agree with that sentiment, and throughout my writings, you will see why little things like a smackdown on ass-grabbing makes me feel like this is the best time we’ve ever been alive.