When Being Seen Doesn’t Feel Safe

On femininity, safety, and the complicated freedom of being a woman on her own.

About a week ago, I was walking my dog, Loki, and something happened that has stayed with me. A man exposed himself to me.

It happened on a little dirt road that I love taking Loki down because it's quiet, there's space for him to run, and I can throw the ball for him. It's one of those little pockets of my life that had simply become part of my routine. But now I don't feel safe going down that road anymore.

And I've been thinking about why this has affected me as much as it has. Because this isn't really a story about one man on one dirt road. It's about what happens when something makes you feel unsafe in your own body, and how quickly that feeling can begin to change the way you move through the world.

I live in Mexico, and I absolutely want to say this first: I don't believe Mexico is an inherently unsafe place. I have lived here, walked here, explored here, and experienced so much beauty and kindness here. But I live on the other side of the highway, in a much more local area. The beach side is far more touristy, with many more people who look like me.

And I definitely stand out here.

I'm 5'7", which feels much taller here than it ever did in Canada. I have blonde hair, blue eyes. It's pretty obvious that I'm not from here.

And then there's the way I dress.

I've always loved getting dressed. I've never really been a minimalist when it comes to my appearance. There is that famous Coco Chanel idea about looking in the mirror before leaving the house and removing one thing. I’ve always thought, what can I add?

I want all the things. The bracelets. The necklaces. The earrings. The glasses. The hair accessories. The sparkle. The colour. The adornment. I love the things women get to use to express themselves.

I've always loved fashion, and even though I work from home now, I still love getting dressed for my clients. I'll put on an outfit, do my hair, put on my jewelry, and show up for my work as if I were going somewhere. Because, to me, it isn't really about where I'm going. It's about how I feel when I look in the mirror and see myself.

But when I'm walking Loki or going grocery shopping, I've found myself changing. Old shorts. A tank top. Hair pulled up. Not because I don't love who I am when I'm dressed up, but because I don't want to stand out.

And I didn't really think much about that until recently.

A few weeks ago, I started sharing a lot of my outfits on my stories on Instagram. And looking back, I think there was something deeper happening underneath that too. It was almost a way of reminding myself: this is still me. I still love beauty. I still love femininity. I still love dressing up. I still love being adorned. She is still me.

Because the truth is, when I'm going out on my own, I don't always feel like I can be her.

And there's something about that that makes me incredibly sad.

It's not that I've stopped loving the woman who gets dressed up. I haven't. She's still completely me. But I've become aware of how differently I move through the world when I'm alone. When I'm with people I know, I feel more comfortable expressing myself exactly as I want to. When I'm alone, I become more conscious of being noticed. And sometimes I feel like I have to put parts of myself away.

Maybe that's part of why sharing those outfits online felt so important to me. It was a way of saying, I'm still here. A way of holding onto the woman I know myself to be, even while another part of me was beginning to feel like I couldn't safely be her everywhere.

I love femininity. I love expressing myself through the way I dress and adorn myself. But that expression is for me. It is not an invitation for strangers to sexualize me, and it should never become something I have to manage in order to feel safe.

That's where the conflict lives for me.

I'm in a long distance relationship, which means that for much of my day-to-day life here, I'm on my own. And being on my own has brought another layer to this.

There is so much life I want to live. I want to travel. I want to explore. I want to go places I've never been. I want to take myself out for dinner. I want to ride my bike. I want to wander.

But I've started noticing an underlying anxiety creeping into places I never expected. I'll think about doing something on my own and suddenly there's a little voice asking: is that safe? Should I really go alone? Should I take a taxi there and back instead of walking? Should I change what I'm wearing? Should I just stay closer to home?

And that's the part that scares me. Not just the possibility of something happening, but the possibility that fear could quietly begin making my world smaller. Because I'm perfectly capable of being on my own. I love my independence. I love having the freedom to decide where I want to go and how I want to spend my time.

I just don't want that freedom to come with an undercurrent of fear.

Perhaps this is something I understand more deeply now because I'm older. There is something strange about reaching an age where you know yourself more deeply, feel more comfortable in your femininity, and yet become increasingly aware of how vulnerable it can feel to be visibly feminine. When I was younger, maybe I was more oblivious. Or maybe I simply didn't think about it as much.

I've been flashed before. I've experienced other situations that crossed sexual boundaries. And I was sexually assaulted when I was a teenager. So my relationship with men and trust has a history. It takes me time to let my walls down. It takes me time to feel safe. And when something happens now, it doesn't necessarily exist only in the present moment. Sometimes the body remembers things the mind has learned to compartmentalize, and something that might look small from the outside can feel much bigger on the inside.

This is also why I think this conversation is more complicated than simply saying, "wear whatever you want." Of course I can wear whatever I want. And I should be able to. What happened to me was never caused by my clothing. It wasn't caused by being blonde, or feminine, or attractive. A man's decision to violate a woman's boundaries belongs entirely to him.

And yet here I am, changing my clothes. Taking taxis instead of walking. Thinking twice about where I go alone. Choosing the busy street. Thinking about whether I should really go somewhere by myself.

I hate that this is what women have to think about. I hate that being aware can so easily turn into being afraid. And I hate that something someone else chose to do can change the way I experience my own freedom.

Because I've spent so much of my life becoming more myself. More confident. More embodied. More comfortable in my femininity. More willing to take up space. More willing to be fully myself. And now I'm confronting this paradox: the older I get, the more deeply I know who I am, and the more aware I am of how vulnerable it can feel to be that woman in the world.

I'm currently in a place where I'm scared to live my life. And honestly? It really sucks.

Because there's so much life I still want to live. So many places I want to see. So much of myself I still want to express. I don't want fear to quietly become the thing that decides what's possible for me. But I also don't want to pretend I'm not afraid. Something has changed. I feel it. And I think I need to honour that before I can find my way through it.

Because this isn't about learning how to dress differently. It isn't about learning how to be more careful. It isn't about accepting that this is simply the reality of being a woman.

It's about grieving the fact that I should be able to live my life without having to think about any of this in the first place. I should be able to be beautiful without being treated like an invitation. I should be able to walk alone without wondering who might be watching. I should be able to travel without fear quietly sitting beside me. I should be able to exist in the world without constantly calculating how visible I am.

I want my freedom back.

Not the freedom of pretending nothing bad can happen. Not the freedom of forcing myself to be brave. But the freedom to live my life without fear being the voice that makes all the decisions.

I don't know exactly how I get there yet. I just know I don't want to give up my life to get there.

I want to express myself. I want to celebrate my femininity. I want to be free. And I want to feel safe.

Maybe that's not asking for too much.

Maybe it's simply asking for what every woman deserves.