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Pressure

Verity

I feel like there's so much pressure on girls to look nice and act a certain way.

It's really frustrating.

Do you wear jewellery and makeup? There's a lot of pressure to wear it.

I don't wear a lot of makeup. The feel of it on my skin is horrible and I've got to wash it off or I'll have a meltdown.

Jewellery I can cope with so long as it's not too heavy or tight.

At school there's a rule that we're not allowed to wear jewellery. I think that's rubbish as a lot of jewellery is only small. I had this gorgeous ring on and my teacher confiscated it - for a week. This was a year ago and I've not worn any at school since.

I don't wear it all the time anyway just every now and then.

It makes me feel more beautiful and special if I'm all geared up. I take jewellery off throughout the day as it becomes uncomfortable after a while.

I feel there's a lot of pressure to look good. I did try and explain to my teacher but she wouldn't agree for some reason.

  • My fiancee, who we suspect is autistic, rarely wears make up. When we started going out, she wore only two, fairly discreet pieces of jewellery, although she now wears a somewhat larger engagement ring which used to belong to my grandmother. She's going to get another ring in ten days.

    I suspect I wouldn't wear make up or jewellery if I was a woman (admittedly a somewhat subjective assessment), although I decided at the last minute that I wanted a wedding ring too, to publicly show the relationship (in Jewish weddings, it's only necessary for the man to give the woman a ring, not the reverse, and grooms can decide if they want one). I worry that I will find it uncomfortable, as I find my watch uncomfortable and tend to only wear it outdoors.

  • Thanks for posting this Sarah! It's prompted some interesting reflection on my front that I hadn't considered. I used to wear make-up and jewelery at school /Sixth form but stopped as soon as I went to University and had the opportunity to be me.

    I also hate the feeling of make-up and I wear none now as a consequence (except sometimes painting my nails). I used to feel a lot of pressure when I was younger to 'make more of an effort'. I've found in the workplace I'm in now people generally don't care. The only jewelery I wear is my smart watch  and engagement ring. As long as I wear appropriate work clothes and look clean and tidy that's enough.

  • in reply to battybats

    I wish I had your confidence.

    I don't like wearing anything like that every day and all the time. It feels uncomfortable if I try but trouble is get judged massively if I don't 'look' right so it's difficult not to. That and get in trouble if teachers notice.

    battybats said:
    What I meant was, why should we all have to wear lots of makeup and jewellery that looks a certain way to be accepted or thought of as pretty? Why does it matter?

    I don't get it either. Makes no sense to me. Everyone seems to think it matters though and you're really unpopular if you disagree and don't do it.

  • Yes, there's a lot of pressure on girls and women to look a certain way. I got myself in trouble for it a lot at school, because I would question why we all had to look the same, and of course everyone else interpreted that as "the way YOU do things is wrong and the way I do it is better, so I'm better than you." What I meant was, why should we all have to wear lots of makeup and jewellery that looks a certain way to be accepted or thought of as pretty? Why does it matter?

    These days (at the grand old age of 35, haha) I do actually wear a fair bit of makeup and jewellery. I felt much better about experimenting with that sort of thing once I figured out what I really liked and felt confident enough in my identity to wear it. I don't feel any need to do it every day, but I also don't feel the need to judge others for doing things differently to me; the pressure to do things a certain way is there, we all just react to it differently.