"How much is the Lemonade?"

"Six dollars, young lady."

"Okay, I'll take one cup." I hand him the six dollars and smile as he hands me the cup.

"Thanks so much, do you have a top?" He smiles and I can see a funny joke emerging on his lips before he shakes it off. He explains, "I was going to say, I'll give you one if you take your top off." He laughs. My eyes pop wide. Without another word, I walk away. "Miss, miss! I was only GUNNA say it. I changed my mind. It was a joke! C'mon!"

I approach my best friend who is off to the side of the lemonade tent at the festival we are at, talking to one of our old high-school acquaintances; I’ll call him "Andrew" for anonymous purposes. I approach her as the man, easily in his 60s, still yells, "It was just a joke!"

"Sophie, I feel uncomfortable. Can we walk away from here?"

She glances at the man still trying to pry my attention and asks, "Why?"

“I just feel uncomfortable.” She still looks confused, so I briefly tell her what the man had just said and am ready to relocate, but Andrew decides to tell me how I should really be feeling, "You're overreacting, being dramatic."

I attempt to defend myself, "It wasn't a funny joke."

"Actually, it was a pretty funny joke. Topless, and a top. Ha!" He chuckles and looks at me like I'm an embarrassment and points towards the man, "He's trying to hand you a top." The exasperation in his voice isn't hidden. I feel a wave of embarrassment and go back to the man to retrieve the top, eyes down, feeling like an overly dramatic annoyance. Sophie seems to side with Andrew on this one issue. So was I just being overly dramatic?

It wasn't until Sophie and I finally walked away from Andrew that rage filled me. How could someone so patronizingly tell me how I should feel about comments about MY body, not his? “It IS funny,” as if it's a fact. How dare this man and how dare Andrew! I was so angry I was fuming that Sophie had to tell me to calm down.

Andrew had absolutely no idea how many unwanted sexually tinged comments I've received from older men who somehow feel they have a badge of superiority over me; instead, he assumed I was having an unwarranted reaction. He was coming from his experience, telling me what my body should feel. Maybe I wouldn't have "over-reacted" at the lemonade stand if I hadn't already patiently dealt with so many unwanted sexually tinged comments from older men in the last several months.

When I was younger, I never truly understood what so many women in the media were complaining about: “I’m sick of feeling subjugated,” they’d say. My body didn't feel subjugated in the ways they constantly claimed was a product of the “crude misogynistic reality our society condones.” I trusted they were staying true to their experiences, but I just didn't understand, and--to a degree--I thought these women were being dramatic, too. Then, something happened. When I turned 20, everything changed. I started getting treated drastically different by men, and mostly much older men. To say, "I'm 20" became a phrase I dreaded. Somehow, in a difference of a mere number, I no longer seemed off limits as a little kid or as a friend's daughter.

At times, I feel like a piece of real estate, and it is scary, draining, and incredibly infuriating. I have experienced some unbelievably uncomfortable situations since the "magic number" 20 that have completely changed my definitions of the society I belong to. Those women I used to overhear talking about their ignored human rights are 100% entitled to their feelings, and to think of them as over-dramatic is completely disregarding their experiences. I am proud to say I am one of these politically active women who is not afraid to look reality in the face and name it for what it is: degrading, sexist, misogynistic.

Yes, perhaps I wouldn't have "overreacted" if just the day before the topless comment, I had not had my idealism so violently shattered when I picked up an older hitchhiker, probably 65 years old, assuming he'd be harmless. I was driving through a long stretch of desert, and it was so incredibly hot that when I saw him with his thumb up, my immediate response was to help. I pulled over and, to my surprise, the first thing he said was, “Don’t worry, I promise I’m not a creep.” I responded with shock, “I wasn’t assuming you were,” but then I began to wonder.

We talked about politics, rivers, climate, and his work as an optometrist, and I thought, "Wow, this is nice, I'm glad I stopped." But then, I finally internalized why "don't pick up hitchhikers if you're alone and a women" is such an important lesson. "Man, Annemarie--your name is Annemarie, right?--I wish I could just stay with you forever." I laughed, a little taken back, not sure what else to do to fill the silence. "No, I REALLY mean I wish I could be with you forever." I choked back my fear. “I’ve been looking for someone just like you, JUST LIKE YOU, oh Annemarie!” At this point, I was becoming keenly aware that we were in the middle of nowhere. I kept pepper spray in my purse, but that was in the backseat. I calmed my nerves, Annemarie, you are just overreacting. He’s probably harmless. “Annemarie, are you engaged?” I hesitated and slowly hid my left arm in my hair, faking a scratch, so he couldn’t see that I had no ring. “Actually, yes, I am.” “Oh, of course you are! Ohhhh, Annemarie!” He groaned. I wanted to scream in repulsion. The conversation continued to grow more uncomfortable; I blocked most of it out of my memory. I didn’t even realize I had blocked most of it out until I was trying to explain what had happened to Sophie, faltering when trying to conjure up his exact phrasing. The whole time, despite the adrenaline and elevated heartbeat, I played along: a coping strategy. I thought that if I acknowledged how uncomfortable he made me, and asked him to stop speaking to me like that, the weirdness of the situation would become precedent and there’d be no reason at all for him to preserve any remaining tact. So, I continued to either stay silent or attempt to switch the subject where I deemed subtle enough. When I finally pulled over to let him out in a small desert town, relieved, he gave me his number and again said something unwanted and repulsive. He offered me money for the ride. I refused. He hesitated in my seat, as if he wasn’t going to get out. “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” I mumbled. “Oh, yeah, okay. Just let me make sure I didn’t leave anything in here except for my heart.” I forced a laugh so he wouldn’t know how uncomfortable I was. Why didn’t I want him to know I was insulted, infuriorated, and repulsed now? The simple answer is that I didn’t want to seem over dramatic, because I had been systemically told all my life, “Don’t be over-dramatic sweetheart.”

When he got out of the car and I sped off, I started screaming and banging my hands against the driver’s wheel. Infuriated, repulsed, and--mostly--sad. Sad because I wanted to kick myself for picking up a hitchhiking man, even if he looked like the friendly old grandfather type. Sad because it’s only a small, small fraction of men that would ever say anything like he had, but I will never, NEVER, again take the risk of trying to help out a man hiking through the desert even if it's 150 degrees. And this is so incredibly sad, because a piece of the idealism and the kindness in the world shattered within me.

Perhaps, I wouldn't have "over-reacted" if one of my friends didn't have a manipulative 55 year old boss pursuing her all summer with un-welcomed comments about her body, beauty, and desire. "He keeps on saying, man--if i was younger, I'd really go after you--and it makes me uncomfortable and i want to tell him to stop talking about me like that, but then he mentions his dead wife just a sentence later, and how much he misses her, and I feel guilty for feeling uncomfortable. He's just a lonely old man." I think of my friend telling me this, and I am enraged. How can someone be so artfully manipulative that who they are harassing begins to blame their own self? It makes me sick.

Yes, perhaps in a different world with a different set of stories I wouldn’t have “over reacted,” but the fact of the matter is when the man behind the lemonade stand made a comment about me going topless, a piece in me broke and I could no longer force a laugh. I could no longer act like everything was okay in fear of over reacting. The months of uncomfortable silence and complacency with how others crudely and openly view my body came bubbling up. I needed to let this man know I was uncomfortable, and that what he said was NOT okay so that he might think before he says something like this again to anyone else. I needed to walk away and show my disapproval. And this is how my first stand against the subjugation of my body immediately came to be met with the humiliating embarrassing phrase, “You're just being dramatic.” Immediately greeted with disapproval? Unbelievable.

This is not okay, and it was then that I realized how incredibly screwed up people can be. “It’s funny, laugh,” people say. But it’s not funny. With every small screwed up comment that women become accustomed to--told that it’s funny or not to think too hard into it--they become desensitized. We learn to laugh it off, and then when situations become more serious, we are still laughing, resorting to the same strategy of complacency we are taught. It’s not okay to feel demeaned, and for someone to tell someone else that they are feeling the wrong emotion in response to a man saying something inappropriate, is--to put simply--egotistical, patriarchal bullshit. Andrew didn’t know where I was coming from, and that is not his fault, but how dare he assume he knew enough to render my reaction over-done. Maybe, to him and what he’s experienced, it is just a funny unloaded joke delivered by a random old dude, but to me: it reminds me of all the subjugation and crude comments so many of my friends and I have had to sit complacent with in a fear of being considered “dramatic, whiny, or hormonal.”

I write this for Andrew; I genuinely think that if he knew the dangerous power of his words he'd feel ashamed. In a weird way, maybe he did me a service.There is no way Andrew could have known how hurtful his comment was--if he did, I don't think he would have made it--but now maybe you, whoever you are, will not make the mistake that he did. I hope you understand that everyone has a different story they bring to each situation, and it is in no way okay for you to tell someone else how they should feel about the humor of their sacred body.

The subjugation of bodies--male and female--is NOT funny, and we can no longer let it be normalized or excused when hidden under a thin veil of puns and jokes. For many of us, it's really not funny, rather it's a scary trigger, and I will never again force a laugh to appease anyone. I'd rather be considered dramatic, whiny, and hormonal on any occasion.

My skin is not for you.