The warning label

May 5, 2026

Do you ever wonder what goes through the minds of people who meet you for the first time?

Not in a vain way. Although, to be clear, I am not above wondering if the outfit landed. I am human. And occasionally wearing excellent shoes.

I mean the other thing.

The quicker thing.

The part where someone starts sorting you before you have finished speaking.

I have had time to sit with that. More time than I would have chosen, if anyone had offered me a menu. I have thought a lot about assumptions, and about how easily people confuse what they notice first with what they understand fully.

That may be the fatal flaw.

Not that people see the surface.

Of course they do.

The body. The tattoos. The height. The hair. The clothes. The art. The fact that I have, at different points in my life, stood on bodybuilding stages and also written governance documents that could ruin a very relaxing afternoon.

There is a lot to notice.

But noticing is not the same as knowing.

Some of those visible choices were never accidental.

A part of me made aesthetic decisions because I understood, long before I had the language for it, that appearance could create friction.

And friction matters.

We do not change systems by making everyone comfortable inside the same old frame. We do not interrupt patriarchal assumptions by politely asking if there might be room for a slightly less beige version of power.

Sometimes the body is the interruption.

Sometimes the outfit is the argument.

Sometimes the tattoos are the refusal to be made smooth enough for easy consumption.

Sometimes the beauty is not compliance. Sometimes it is bait for the assumption.

I have had privilege. I know that.

Pretty privilege. Height privilege. White privilege. The privilege of education. The privilege of being able to enter certain rooms and be understood, at least initially, as credible enough to be let in.
I have also made choices about what to do once inside those rooms.

Because privilege, if it is not used to create pressure on the structures that granted it, becomes just another decorative object on the shelf.

And I was never going to be a tasteful lamp.

The question I keep returning to is whether people confuse the visible parts of a woman with the limits of her capacity.

Does pretty mean there is no substance?

Does styled mean there is no strategy?

Does athletic mean there is no analysis?

Does feminine mean manageable?

Does artistic mean unserious?

Does visible mean available?

Does different mean useful, until inconvenient?

These are not just social mistakes. They become something else when decisions are built around them.

They become operational risk.

Because if you assume you know what kind of woman you are dealing with, you may stop looking at what she is actually capable of seeing.

You may assume the visible woman will miss the structure.

You may assume the woman with the tattoos will not read the room.

You may assume the woman in the shoes will not read the record.

You may assume the bodybuilder is too self-focused to recognize when the weight is being loaded onto her bar for someone else’s failed lift.

And that is where the assumption becomes fatal.

Not to me.

To the reading.

To the plan.

To the people who mistook aesthetics for absence.

Nothing about me ties into a neat bow.

Which is unfortunate, because I do love a bow.

But the body was never the whole story.

Neither were the tattoos.

Neither was the height.

Neither was the art.

Neither was the beauty.

Neither was the softness.

Neither was the anger.

Neither was the MBA.

Neither was the pro card.

Neither was the sketchbook.

Not the evidence.

That is the part I think people miss when they read women too quickly.

They are not reading the woman.

They are reading their own assumptions back to themselves and mistaking the echo for insight.