I was triggered by an email from my boss

This time around I have made it a point to have a good work-life balance. This means that I don't check work email at home. However, as the school year has gone on I will let that policy slip a little bit and check email here and there. That's what happened last night when while lying in bed I checked my work email to find an email from my principal. The subject was in all caps important please read. It was about dress code. More specifically about women's dress code. Since the weather was getting warmer it said it was time to go over some of the expectations. I immediately got defensive and started to feel facing a grand jury having to explain my actions.

That day I had worn a long dress. Floor length but sleeveless. I wore a long sleeve sweater draped over my shoulder so that my arms were not exposed. However, as the day went on and the air conditioner did not seem to be working in my room I took the sweater off leaving my arms bare. Shock and horror of course. Now this in itself was a big step for me because I normally don't expose my arms at all. I never have. Even when I was skinny I was self-conscious about the fact that they were so pale. Now that I'm larger, I'm self-conscious about their size. It seems that the world did not stop spinning if my arms were showing. Except for today. I'm sure the email was not just about me. But I'm sure I was included as a focus of the email. And that just crushed me. Because I couldn't help but think but what if my arms weren't fat would it have been okay?

Another issue that was addressed was cleavage. I actually have my dress pinned together at the top so as not to show cleavage. However it's definitely not all the way up to the neck. I thought about the women who work at my school who wear traditional Muslim clothing and cover their heads, their arms and their necks. I suddenly felt very self-conscious about all that I had shown and all of my clothing throughout the year.

You wouldn't think that such a routine email could set me off so much. But PTSD is real. Having to defend my clothing, my actions, my femaleness in general just takes me back to that dark place in my life when I was a teenager who was told that I should have expected to be raped.

It affected me so much that I didn't go to work today. Then as a snowball effect I felt bad about myself for having been affected so much which made me feel even worse about myself and so on Down the Line.

I guess it was about time for this to happen. After all, I had been feeling pretty positive about myself. Pretty confident. But then I was reminded that I am a fat, strike one, woman, strike two, in a patriarchal society. It will probably always be this way, at least in my lifetime. I just hope I can get better at not letting things affect me so strongly. I'm reminded about the saying of a ship in the middle of the ocean. It is not the water that drowns the ship,

it is the water that gets in. I need to not let certain things get in. By the way, here is a picture of me in the dress.