Funny how nobody's talking about what Senator Sanders looks like.

The same people who seem to think that what I look like is a relevant world issue don't seem to feel that way about him.

Am I a model?  No.

An actress? No.

A singer? No.

A dancer? No.


Is there anyone who thinks that he or she can truthfully accuse me of trying to make money from what I look like?

The truthful answer to that question is NO, so why have so many people who have spent years making money from what they look like also spent so much time talking about what I look like?

Has there been even one other person since 2010 whose looks, good and bad, have been the focus of so much unrequested discussion?

I have blogged thousands of written pages and spoken videos, some of them smart and some of them not so smart.  I have NOT spent this decade publishing thousands of pictures of myself or agreeing to have other people take or publish pictures of me.  Why is what I look like treated as if it is more relevant than anything that I say?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Senator Sanders is not now, and wasn't a decade ago, pin-up material needing just a few thousand dollars of renovations.  There was nothing about what he looked like then that was treated as if it were an issue in any way at all, nor is what he looks like now being treated as if it eclipses his human rights.

The bullying about my physical flaws has been concurrent for that decade with the outrageous, pre-Civil-Rights-Movement-esque ADMONISHMENT that I'm so beautiful that I should take being sexually harassed and intimately filmed without my consent as compliments.  Frequently, despite all of my protests, I have also been treated as if I like being sexually harassed and intimately filmed without my consent, as if a women in her 30s and then her 40s can't think of less invasive, degrading ways to seek validation for what she looks like or anything else.  Contrary to the way that I am characterized in the 2011 song by One Direction entitled "What Makes You Beautiful," I did already know that I was beautiful.  People have told me that all my life; it is the sort of thing that a sensible person says "Thank you" for and then moves on to other topics.  I HATE that song, not least because of its references to my pubic hair and being filmed masturbating without my consent.

Here's a primer for the former members of One Direction and everyone else who thinks these crimes are compliments:

"You're pretty" is a compliment.  Repeating "You're pretty" over and over again when the recipient is stating clearly that she doesn't want to talk about how pretty she is anymore is sexual harassment.

"I like your pubic hair and watching you masturbate," said explicitly or implicitly, is SEXUAL HARASSMENT THE FIRST TIME THAT YOU SAY IT.

Everyone is mistaken who thinks that I have simpered in self-congratulation rather than wanting to rip every radio in the world to shreds every time that I have heard that song or others like it for years.

Although I have aged at the same rate as Senator Sanders since 2010, nobody is treating me as if I deserve more respect now than I did in 2010 for being less beautiful now than I was then; quite the opposite.  Invasions of my privacy have been going on for so long that many people treat these invasions as if they are normal.  My aging is also not being treated as a sign that this atrocity, which never should have happened in the first place, has gone on for too long.  The crimes which were initially touted as compliments to my beauty are now being treated as the punishment that I deserve for being an aging show-off who thought she was all that.