Advice/ Feminism

Simone Biles Doesn’t Care if You Think She’s Hot

She can fly

Unsolicited attention is not flattering at work. Sexual attention at work is like Saran Wrap sucking all the air out of your career. If one person is walking backward while one is walking forward, harassment, you have a problem.

Reading about Cuomo brings me back. It reminds me of every demeaning interaction that I ever had with men, where my rejecting them was seen as a personal attack. Why couldn’t I take a compliment? Why was I so sensitive? Why couldn’t I just be flattered?

Here’s some unsolicited advice in response to unsolicited sexual advances at work.

1. Don’t ask co-workers or employees about their sex life
2. Don’t have conversations with employees, colleagues, or co-workers that you wouldn’t have in front of your wife and kids
3. Don’t have conversations that you wouldn’t have in front of a sexual harassment lawyer
4. Women don’t care if you think they’re pretty unless you’re in a romantic relationship
5. Don’t have conversations with people you’re not intimate with for the purpose of turning yourself on
6. If you’re feeling titillated at work, don’t act on it
7. Be professional. It’s a job, not Tinder
8. Don’t be mean to women because you’re attracted to them
9. Don’t be punitive as a way to manage your attraction
10. Just because you’re feeling it doesn’t mean they’re feeling it
11. Don’t pretend you don’t know the difference between funny and inappropriate
12. If you don’t know the difference between funny and inappropriate, get help
13. If someone is backing away from you, they don’t feel safe
14. How attracted you are to a person isn’t as important as how safe they feel

There’s more, but that’s off the top of my head. I’m not 20 years old anymore, so there are some men who can’t see me.

But, I am a woman who swims in a pool with men. Some know how to behave. They know that we’re both there to swim laps. That’s why people go to pools. Other men seem to think how I look in my swimsuit is a conversation starter.

I think a lot about these women athletes, having been one. Particularly, I think about our national gymnasts. Their systematic abuse is a national tragedy, probably an international tragedy.

Women just want to do our thing. We want to be powerful. We want to strive. We want to be the best at our skills. But mostly, we don’t want to be interrupted while we’re trying to accomplish our dreams. Simon Biles is Wonder Woman and Superman combined. She knows how to fly. She doesn’t care if you think she’s hot.

When Cuomo’s accuser reported on him, she was transferred. That’s wrong. Let’s make a world where a woman doesn’t have to go away because a man did something wrong to her. Let’s live in a world where women are not punished for saying no. Where women can still thrive when they’re not attracted to their mentor. Where women don’t have to be transferred to a different department because the man on top wants to be the man on top.

Matt Lauer. Jeffry Epstein. Donald Trump. Tony Robbins. Mario Cuomo. Harvey Weinstein. James Franco. Tavis Smiley. Charley Rose. Brett Kavanaugh. R. Kelley. Just to name a few.