You Look Really Cute

The sentence that broke a paradigm, one pause at a time

This is the final part of a four-part series on identity, culture, and what watching Woodstock 99 cracked open in me decades later. This one’s the most personal, about the woman I was, the woman I became, and the daughter watching both. If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, 3, this one lands harder if you start from the beginning.

There was a version of me who dressed loud, laughed loud, wore whatever felt fun and alive that day, and didn’t think twice about it. My senior year of high school, I got voted “most original style.” I marched to my own drum right into art school, through every up and down, and I liked who that girl was.

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Then I was assaulted, and something in me went into hiding.

I started wearing big, baggy, black clothes. Nothing tight, nothing bright, nothing that used to feel like joy. I wanted to disappear inside fabric. I wanted to stop being seen, because being seen was apparently what had gotten me hurt. That wasn’t a style choice. That was armor. I was trying to make myself invisible enough that it could never happen again.

Here’s what I know now that I couldn’t have known then. The shame I was carrying was never mine. It belonged to the boy who did what he did and then walked away as if nothing had happened at all. But shame doesn’t ask permission before it moves in. It just finds somewhere to live, and it lived in me, in my closet, in the years I spent making myself smaller so I’d never be noticed like that again.

Years passed. I got married. I had kids. And somewhere in the middle of being a good mom, a good wife, a good everything to everyone, I started having panic attacks. I wasn’t performing a lie exactly. I wasn’t being fake. I was just so busy living everyone else’s version of me that I’d lost touch with my own joyous soul. The panic attacks were my body’s way of finally saying enough. That was the beginning of my shake-up. My wake-up.

It’s taken years since then, layer by layer, to find my way back to the woman who used to march to her own drum. Watching that Woodstock 99 documentary this year was just the most recent layer. It cracked something open that had already been cracking for a while.

And then, a few weeks ago, my daughter walked out in an outfit that made her feel cute and confident, heading out with friends. And for one full second, every old fear I’ve ever carried showed up at once. You’re going downtown without me. I can’t keep you safe out there. You shouldn’t wear that.

I felt it. I let myself feel it, because pretending it wasn’t there wouldn’t have made it any less real.

But I didn’t say it.

I paused, and in that pause I remembered exactly what that fear had cost me. I remembered the baggy black clothes. I remembered years of making myself small because somebody else’s actions taught me my body was dangerous just by existing. And I refused, in that moment, to hand her the same inheritance.

So what came out of my mouth instead was, “You look really cute. That’s a really fun outfit, where’d you get it? I don’t think I’ve seen it before.” And as she walked out the door, “Have a good time. Be careful.”

That’s it. That’s the whole paradigm shift, right there in a couple of sentences. Not perfect. I still said be careful, because the world hasn’t finished earning my trust yet either. But I didn’t tell her to cover up. I didn’t tell her she was asking for something. I told her she looked cute, and I meant it, and then I let her walk out the door as exactly who she is.

I want to be honest about something here, because I think it matters. I still tell my daughters to be careful. I still want them to know what to watch out for, how to read a room, how to trust their gut when something feels wrong. That’s not naive optimism I’m handing them, pretending bad things don’t still happen. They do. I know that as much as the next woman.

But there’s a difference between protection and shame, and I refuse to hand them protection wrapped in shame like it’s some kind of female legacy to be proud of. Watching out for yourself is wisdom. Believing your body or your outfit or your presence is the reason someone hurt you is a lie, and it’s a lie I carried for years before I understood it wasn’t mine to hold. I can teach my daughters awareness without teaching them that they’re responsible for someone else’s choices. Those are two different lessons, and for a long time our culture handed women only one of them.

I am not the woman I was before the assault. I’m not going to pretend that version of me is fully recoverable, or that healing means going back to some untouched original state. But I am also not the woman who hid in black clothes for years either. I’m something new, built from both of those women, and I get to decide, every single day, which one gets to raise my daughter.

I refuse to leave shrinking as her inheritance. I refuse to make my fear her curfew. Whatever it costs me to stay in that pause, to choose the sentence that builds her up instead of the one that was handed down to me, I will keep paying it. Every single time she walks out into the world.