Men Don’t Look At Me When I’m With My 20-Year-Old Daughter. This Is What That Feels Like

It happened for the first time a few years ago: I was walking out of a restaurant with my beautiful daughter. She was wearing a fitted red shirt, her long black hair was loose and flowing around her shoulders. And for the first time, I noticed a man was clearly checking her out. She didn’t see the way he was looking at her because her nose was in her phone, but there was a part of me that wanted to hold her close, tell him that she was a teenager and he better keep his eyes to himself or I’d twist his balls off.

But that was just the start. Now, two years later, whenever I go anywhere with my 20-year-old daughter, it’s not just that every man looks at her, it’s that they don’t look at me at all. And while I don’t measure my value by how many men look at me, it is something that I noticed. If I’m being honest it stings a little.

I’m a single woman who feels like I'm in my prime. I’m in the best shape of life. I love my career and have strong friendships. Most importantly, I have an amazing relationship with myself and with my daughter. Now that she’s an adult, she’s my best friend and we do a lot of stuff together. We go to the gym, out to eat, we love to shop and cook. She is my everything.

I can honestly say that there isn’t a part of me that’s jealous of my daughter. She is beautiful. Actually, to me, she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. And my need to protect her from the wrong people will never go away. So do I feel like I want to shield her a little bit when we’re in public? I do.

But this has also been a reminder that I am getting older. I’m changing. So I’ve had a few moments, flickers really, that something has passed, that I’m a little invisible.

As a Gen-X woman, I’ve had to work hard on something that was drilled into me as a young woman: how many men pay attention to me does not affect my worth. Mainstream media, fashion, and pop culture heavily emphasized physical appearance as a woman’s most valuable asset — especially how our appearance was perceived by men.

And while it’s gotten better, there’s still a lot of work to do. I’ve tried to instill in my kids that appearance and how many admirers, followers, or likes they have doesn’t make them more valuable. So when my daughter started drawing a lot of attention it was a reminder that I need to continue to do the work. I am human so a certain kind of attention may feel validating in the moment, especially because we are practically trained to accept a man’s gaze as currency. But it’s not.

My worth has nothing to do with how many people look at me or check me out. My daughter’s worth is the same. Our worth is in our head, it’s in our choices, how we treat ourselves, and it absolutely can not be determined by the male gaze.

It’s hard for me to admit that having men look at my daughter instead of me was a little hiccup, but a gaze is just a gaze — it’s fleeting — and it will never be able to determine anyone’s value.

Diana Park is a writer who finds solitude in a good book, the ocean, and eating fast food with her kids.