Validation in the Eyes of Men

Images taken by Sophia George

Sometimes I can’t go to sleep without re-reading an Instagram DM or a Bumble message a boy has sent me regarding my physical beauty. When I see it, I smile a little smile; it is the piece of reassurance I need in order to get a good night’s sleep. Sure, my mother and father never fail to tell me that I’m beautiful both inside and out, but when it comes from a boy my age — someone I could potentially fall in love with and someone who could potentially fall in love with me — it means more because isn’t that what beauty’s for? A prerequisite for romantic feelings?

I know it isn’t a very “feministy” thing to admit — how I seek validation in the way men see me — but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t true. I know it also seems highly narcissistic, this obsession with vanity and the consistent desire to seek it out, but it’s not sprung from arrogance. No, it arises from the deepest insecurity, the fear of never being completely and utterly loved, even though I seem to so easily fall in love with those men I hardly even know.

Coming from a family of seven people, I am also a very tolerant person. With all those different siblings, you learn from a young age to be immune to their stings and their attempts to hurt you. You become numb to their insults and complaints about your “cringeyness.” You don’t have the energy to stand up for yourself when they exaggerate stories or tell lies, instead retreating back into your room because it’s not worth the fight that will inevitably follow. So, you become, in general, a more tolerant individual. More tolerant of insults thrown your way. More tolerant of yelling and screaming in the house while you are trying to study for a test. More tolerant of judgmental eyes staring down at the outfit you’ve selected for the day.

This tolerance can be extremely advantageous: it allows for the ability to become less obsessed with things you can’t control, to not concern yourself with criticisms not worth your time, to not be so “fussy” over things that would normally occupy the mind of another, perhaps, only child. Unfortunately, though, it can also stop one from intervening when it is necessary, making you so tolerant that you become complacent in your own toleration and accept anything that comes your way.

For me, that combination of neurotically seeking validation from men and tolerating actions and words sent my way only leads to destruction. I only recently remembered that I had, in fact, been the victim of someone putting his hands where they shouldn’t have been. In a moment of clarity, my mind distant from all my auto-wired quest for praise, I remember acknowledging that a specific action taken towards me was wrong. It was small, so I don’t like to even classify it as assault. I feel like the word is wasted on the action because I honestly feel perfectly fine. That’s where the problem arises. I’m more mad at myself for not caring that it happened than the event happening itself. Because it speaks to the way in which my brain works when it comes to men.

When I get catcalled on the streets of Washington D.C., I don’t get mad. Sure, it can be scary in the moment, but once I see that no further action will be taken, that no harm will follow up, I go back to walking and listening to my headphones. When I walked down the main street in Knightsbridge and two grown men pulled down their vehicle window to say something crass to my lonely 19-year-old self listening to The Smiths already disillusioned with love because of a horribly unremarkable date earlier that evening. Sure, I believed a little less in love, but I can’t say that I wasn’t glad they thought me attractive. At least they gave me more attention than he had that night, a newly bought black dress gone to waste because he didn’t care to see me.

30 minutes later, when I’ve returned to the safe confines of my dorm room or my flat on Motcomb Street, I look upon the interaction a little annoyed but also, I must admit, I feel validated. Checking myself out in the mirror and thinking that I must have looked nice today. When I’m at a party and someone leans in too close or puts his hand where, purely objectively, it shouldn’t be, I’m pleased that he thought me pretty in the first place, that he thought I was “worthy” enough. And that’s the reality of my messed-up brain. Not only toleration of toxic things, but my pride in it, my almost subconscious attempt to seek it out.

That I didn’t recognize it before because I tolerate so much. That I didn’t recognize it because I liked that I was wanted by a man, in whatever way that was. That I didn’t recognize it because maybe, subconsciously, I made him do it; my desire to be wanted must have manifested itself onto my facial expressions somehow, and, in some way, the experience had been my fault. I’m a shameless flirt. I gave him permission with the future validation I knew I would receive from the experience because I do always end up receiving it.

So I only acknowledge it now. I can only now remember it for what it was. For a long time, that memory, instead of being stained, was yet again just another cause for “celebration,” where I recalled how much he liked me. How he asked for my name. How he chose me from the crowd of people to want to dance with. How he owned the place with his other senior friends. How he told me I was hot and how he ended up making out with some random girl I didn’t know at the end of the night because I rejected him. These pieces of information were what I remembered most because those details—that he was a senior, that he thought me hot, that he didn’t go get somebody “better” than me—were what I needed for my quest for validation.

My brain is still wired this way. I still find myself searching for turned heads on the street and potential boys who might choose to come over and talk to me at a party. But, having finally found someone I like, it seems like all my self-worth can be defined by him alone. It can be relieving, this decrease of attention for the way the other men here in the moment see me, but it allows his perspective of me to either make or break me. My self-worth is in the hands of one man. At least now, I am aware of my thought processes. I can name it when I sense it go off in my brain. But it doesn’t necessarily mean it changes. The focus just changes, the men whose opinions I care about replacing previous fixations. But my seeking out validation from men seems like a never-ending cycle.

By Sophia George

Indecisive hopeless romantic attempting to navigate the intersection of Arts and politics