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© Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
A friend of mine was working at his place of business, downtown, and an attractive young woman (who he knew slightly) entered his store. She was dressed in a very sharp, short dress, and she was made up, and had her hair done nicely. He said, "You're looking very nice today." And she flew into a rage, and called him a sexist pig.
Clearly, she over-reacted. His remark was not sexist, by any reasonable definition. Besides discrimination based upon sex, my dictionary gives this definition of sexism: "attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles." This definition would seem to make the borderline between sexism and nonsexism very fuzzy. But "You're looking very nice today" is still not sexist. My friend says that he just was trying to be friendly, and people who make an extra effort to look nice would probably appreciate such a comment.
To dress up (like the lady did) is traditionally an effort to attract the attention of the opposite sex (fitting our dictionary definition of sexism). Apparently that traditional situation is not necessarily true, nowadays. We can dress up for other reasons. The above lady probably dressed up for nonsexist reasons. But she seems to have been acutely aware that her reasons could be misconstrued as sexist, the desire to attract males. She was obviously insecure enough to take any favorable comment as sexism.
Or (just possibly) she really was cruising for males, but not that particular male. Forgive me for saying that, but the survival of our species still implies the pairing up of males and females, somehow. How is this possible if any casual sign of attraction is classified as abhorrent in the extreme. Unwanted but mild signs of attraction must be rebuffed, not punished.