Just keep telling her she’s awesome. Don’t focus on the legs, just tell her all the things you love about her. And if she directly asks you about them, don’t make it a big deal. Just say “I don’t care, you’re beautiful.” For me the best thing my husband did was to counter the constant onslaught of beauty standards over media by telling me every day what he loves about me and how cool he thinks I am.

I’ve been abused (physically and mentally) by my parents and bullied at school. I can obviously only talk about myself, but maybe my experience helps you.

Understanding, that those people will never care or feel guilt, is hard. Especially when you were abused as a child and hoped for a happy end. Actively trying to get over it also didn’t work very well for me. For me the best thing to do was focus on other things: find friends, find hobbies, do whatever you always wanted to do (I started wearing clothes I was forbidden to wear and practicing hobbies that were ridiculed).

Just fill your life with things you like and the bullies and abusers will become smaller and smaller.

Therapy is a good start to help you with this and question yourself, who you are and who you want to be.

A pocket knife and a houseplant in a pot.

No, it didn’t cover anything, it was really just the lines for the character. I don’t think you could cover much under it other than a very tiny tattoo.

Maybe not quite as dumb as others here, but I once saw a woman in a sauna who had a GIANT 女 (woman) on her back. It went from the shoulders to the ass. I get finding Chinese characters cool and wanting them tattooed, but why on earth would you just tattoo “woman” instead of something meaningful and why so large it covers your entire back?

My entire life I’ve heard Americans lecture everyone how superior the US is because of all their rights, freedoms and “real democracy”. The freest country in the world! Look at the constitution and the bill of rights - the most democratic country EVER! Where are those Americans now?

If they only mimic me and have some knowledge based on what is on my phone/online, they probably don’t speak the same foreign languages as I on the same level. So I could authenticate myself by proving that I speak those languages.

That’s not true everywhere, my city has a pretty good meetup scene for various hobbies. However the amount of people who sell their useless courses as “meetup, but I will ask for a 20€ fee from everyone” or shady “we will talk about investing/crypto…” groups has gone up.

Tom Cruise I just don’t like anything about him

Will Smith, because he’s annoyed me in every role after Prince of Bel Air

Try out things. What you like to do isn’t always just something you always dreamed about. Finding a job you’re good at will make you like it. That doesn’t have to be something connected to a school subject. I was always very organized and I found out that I like working in project management. Had you told me in school about this job I’d probably have said it sounds boring. But I tried it by chance and it’s actually very satisfying because I get to plan and organize.

You’ll never know if you don’t try. Get an entry level job, even if you don’t like it you might find out that you like certain aspects of it and get a better idea of what you like in a job.

I’m forty, so a different generation than your parents, but I still grew up and had my first dating experiences before the internet. Online dating wasn’t really a thing here until I was in my early twenties.

At least where I grew up the guys who randomly approached girls to ask them out were seen as creepy even back in the 90s. I and everyone I knew met partners through activities like sports clubs, parties, bars etc. (I’m not from the US, so people from my school started going to bars pretty early). While there wasn’t a big discourse around men approaching women in public (or none that reached my little town), we did have some guys in town who’d just walk up to girls on the street and ask them out and the consensus was that they were weird and should be avoided.

I met all my partners so far through activities. My first boyfriend was a regular at the same student café and we ended up sitting next to each other during quiz night. I met guys I had dates with in uni - sitting next to each other during lectures and talking about the Prof, going to the same presentation or cooking night etc. None of them “approached me” in the sense of coming up to me and asking “can I have your number” with zero context. We chatted, had an interesting conversation. At the end we exchanged contact information to meet for a coffee, usually without any expectation of it being a date. When coffee went well, someone would ask the other out on a proper date. No approaching, no deciding within a few seconds wether you want to date someone. Just casually getting to know each other before asking for more.

I also met my husband that way. We went to the same event, talked, had a lot in common. We met the next day to continue a discussion about a certain topic we were both interested in. That’s when things started getting flirty and by the end we made plans to meet for a real date. I don’t even remember who asked whom, we were both heavily flirting with each by the time we talked about seeing each other again so it was very obvious the next meeting would be a date. He didn’t ask me out out of nowhere or hit on me, we were just getting to know new people and eventually we started flirted somewhere along the line.

It doesn’t have to be makeup, but caring for how you look can help you feel fly, too. A haircut that fits. Face treatments or creams with nice scents feel good. Finding the right products for you can make you feel good. I helped my husband find the right soap and shampoo for his skin and hair type, got him to use moisturizer and better shaving products. His acne that he had for years vanished completely, his skin is nice and smooth now and he feels so much better because all the dry skin was uncomfortable. He also goes to a barber shop now that massages his head and gives him a haircut and beard trimming and he loves having a little spa time.

It won’t magic magically cure your depression or reduce your weight, but it will help you feel better in your body.

I’m a bi woman and have always preferred women. But I ended up falling in love with a wonderful man who is now my husband. I’m currently really grateful for that. Loving a woman in this climate would be so stressful. I’m very scared for my trans best friend though.

There’s a mobile phone repair shop next to where we live. Everything in the window is faded from the sun. In 6 years of living here I have not seen it open or someone inside even once.

Can’t be good for the quality. I already get a lot of errors in my native language: the correct translation to my native language is not accepted and the “correct translation according to Duolingo” is grammatically wrong. So I keep getting errors for not using wrong grammar in my own mother language. This is going to keep getting so much worse and I have to wonder, if I’m even learning the correct grammar in the foreign language.

I was a project manager for a pretty large project last year at my job. I really tried my best to shield the developers from all the bullshit. We had a very difficult customer who changed their mind almost twice a week about things, demanded meetings about the progress 2-3 times a week, didn’t understand that the requested changes won’t be in the testsystem within a day of mentioning them (not even sending us a proper change request in writing, just mentioning them in a meeting) and so on. Not to mention talking with the higher-ups who got nervous when the customer kept complaining and explaining to them that we/the devs are working as fast as possible and that the customer is being unreasonable.

The worst part about that role was not the utterly irrational customer but our own colleagues in development. They unloaded all their frustration about the project on me. I tried to handle it, in a way it’s part of the job. I got shit on by the customer for not meeting their unreasonable demands and ridiculous timelines, got shit on by upper management because this project with this very important customer is having trouble, had to defend myself AND the rest of the team by showing that the customer doesn’t know what they want. Just to then turn around and get screamed at by a dev because he’s sick of having to go to our 1/2-hour-a-week meeting and also how come there’s been four change requests already. He told me I wasn’t doing my job, because all he wants is to implement the requirements as planned half a year ago but I kept sending change requests instead of doing my job as a project manager and shielding him from this shit. Wouldn’t believe me that if the customer had his way, he’d be getting four change requests per week.

Yeah, I’m pissed and also currently looking for a new job. And no way am I ever doing this shit job again, where you’re just everybody’s doormat and get yelled at by customers, bosses and your own team alike.

Not even censoring, also outright stealing for karma farming. I’ve had perfectly normal photos being criticized as not within the rules for bullshit reasons. An alcoholic drink aggressively marketed in two “variations” for men in women in pointlessly gendered was taken down with the bullshit excuse, that men and women have different metabolisms so it wasn’t pointless. A week later there was a post about this drink with a lot of upvotes and my exact photo from our local supermarket. It was posted by one of the very active accounts. Mods are taking down promising content in some subs just to post it themselves.

The straight-A student who could have gotten into any course at any university with her grades ended up getting a degree in art history and works at a museum now. She was never much into art in school, mostly focussed on chemistry actually and thought about studying medicine or biochemistry when we graduated.

Another straight-A student never left our 900-inhabitants village. Everybody thought he’d surely make it big, study medicine or engineering or something like that and work for a big company. He’s working at the small local bank.

On the other hand, one of the girls who was always very anti-school and didn’t care much for grades (I don’t actually know how good her grades were, but definitely not among the top students) is a lawyer at a large law firm now.

Yeah, that’s the other thing. I was a teenager in the 90s and just walking up to someone in public to hit on them or flirting with people who are working was seen as weird back then too. You met people through hobbies, school, parties or clubs.

“Approaching in public” can mean so many different things. What most women have a problem with is being approached in a situation where the man has some form of power over her. For example a cashier or server has to be friendly and smile or she will risk her job. Being approached is uncomfortable, because too many men don’t understand it when the no comes with a smile. They are also in a position of power, because they can complain about her or make a scene and get her in trouble.

In this case the TSA agent has some form of power over her and could give her trouble if she refuses. She has no way of knowing if a “no” will be met with understanding or with him holding her up, being insistent, keeping her from passing. That’s what makes it especially uncomfortable.