[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
They will survive without your intervention. I swear it to you.
Has your own shoe ever been untied and you haven’t noticed? Honestly, if you’re above the age of, say, eight, this is just unlikely. But okay, let’s say your shoe was untied, and you didn’t notice. In that case, did you actually trip over your own, limp shoelace? Also unlikely. And let’s say you did trip–did you curse the fact that no other person on this earth intervened and told you about your languid lace? Chances are, none of this has ever happened to you or anyone you know.
So why? Why do you insist on stopping strangers on the street mid-walk or mid-conversation to say, “Your shoe is untied.” Really, I do want you to ask yourself why, so that you can work through this error of thinking that you need to be the one to tell someone this. The only people who need to speak this phrase are those who are caregivers or parents to a young child in their care.
But you know what I notice? And I really hate to make this about gender, but as a woman and a parent to a young woman, you know who are the ones telling me and my daughter that our shoes are untied? It’s always men. Middle-aged to older men. It starts to make me wonder: is this about shoelaces, or is this about something else? It sure starts to feel like it’s about the male gaze and men needing attention from the women who pass through their orbits, on our own way somewhere, somewhere that doesn’t concern them at all. Guys, it just feels a little sad and a little desperate as a way to get a little acknowledgment of your existence from a woman or girl. It also feels insulting and infantilizing, and is an interruption of our conversations or our attention to whatever it is that’s on our minds. Just leave us alone. Let us not be perceived by you, seen by you, to the point of a shoelace. Keep walking. Ssssshhhhhhhhh. It’s okay.
If we trip, I promise we won’t blame you.
So if you tell me my shoe is untied, I’m going to tell you: Get a life, man.—Anonymous