Reading my friend Ells’ blog post on confidence and a recent forum discussion lately has sparked this blog post and made me think about being judged. I put enough pressure on myself to accomplish things without getting judgement from other people too, and this line of the blog post rang particularly true for me:

“Why must women try their best and do it in heels? Isn’t just doing your best enough?”

In terms of looks, I don’t really care. I wasn’t interested in clothes or appearance or anything like that until I was about sixteen, and even though I care marginally more now, I don’t make an effort. I could probably make the time, but you’re more likely to find me in a (fitted) t-shirt and jeans, traces of Halo’s endlessly shedding white fur, and no make up. I try to avoid attention because it makes me uncomfortable, and making an effort inevitably leads to more attention. This ‘don’t care’ attitude is a mixture of things; I have too many other things to think about, I’ll start to get irritated by every flaw because I’m a perfectionist, and because I don’t want to be judged on my appearance. Killing for fashion, suffering to be beautiful – I don’t believe in all that crap. You’ll only find me in heels on a night out or special occasion, and even then they are most likely to be boots unless it’s formal. Having said that, I’m not a tomboy. I like pink and cute things, I just also like being comfortable.

I’m not only judged because I’m female, but because I’m short, not white, and look young for my age. People have all kinds of preconceptions and judgements about me, whether I’m buying a laptop and a salesperson tries to explain what RAM is to me in a very fluffy way, or they’re surprised because I’m not someone’s assistant. Thankfully, in my current job I don’t get any of that rubbish and even though I’m completely out-geeked by sysadmins and the like, I much prefer that to the condescending stuff of the ‘real world’. When I was at uni, most people were surprised that I was doing an English degree because of the colour of my skin, which is pretty appalling for the 21st century.

I also read stuff recently about why women feel they have to be Superwoman. It’s so true for me, mostly because I’m full time ‘housewife’, employee and freelancer all rolled into one. I’m becoming such a taskaholic that it’s impossible for me to say, ‘Right, now I’m going to watch TV for a bit’ without thinking ‘…but I need to tidy up/cook dinner/finish a blog post/go to the gym soon’ straight after. I don’t really divide them into separate roles as ‘housewife’, ‘freelancer’, ‘health’ etc., they are just all part of one long list of ‘Things I need to do’ (a metaphorical list that is; I’ve given up on making to do lists because I don’t have the time. You know you’re busy when you don’t have time to think what to make for dinner, you just start cooking).I’m great at delegating, especially to poor Joe, but often I know things just won’t get done unless I do them. Sometimes I have to do them again anyway, which makes me sound like a crazy obsessive compulsive person, but the truth is I’m just high maintenance :P

I’ve also adopted some interesting advice from Joanna . Her view is that you shouldn’t think about whether you want to do something, you should just do it. That way you avoid situations where you’re like, ‘Do I want to go to the gym today? Well, I feel kind of tired, so I guess not’, and you’re at the gym before you know it. Unfortunately I’m still so wired up at the end of the day that I’m getting very little sleep. Last night I was exhausted, so I purposely took the evening out to relax and spent an hour reading Warm Bodies before falling asleep at a reasonable 11pm ish.

My problem is that I don’t feel like I achieve anything, and the things I really want to achieve seem beyond my grasp right now. Perhaps I’m just (sub)consciously overwhelmed.

Do you feel you get judged on things like appearance, gender and expectations? How has it affected you?