But being a “pretty girl” has taught me one thing: I am not my body.

The best disguises aren’t disguises at all. The best way to hide is in plain sight, and I’ve got a lot hidden out in the open. When men shout at me on the street, they’re shouting at a mask, it doesn’t touch me. When men talk to me at bars, they’re talking to a fantasy. I am not the pretty girl, but I can wear her clothes, her makeup, her blank expression that allows me to be present but unaffected by the predatory intentions that make many girls hate being “pretty.”

Because let’s face it, we’re wired to love pretty.

The thing I love the most about being pretty is that it gives me a perfect disguise. I am a person, hidden behind an attractive mask. People expect certain things of beautiful women, and rarely do those things involve having a personality, a brain, a heart. When I want to be brainless, heartless, or avoid acting like a real person altogether, I just wear the mask. After all, few people expect any better.

However, I choose to wear this mask. I am not a victim of a society that has thrust its own expectations onto me, I have chosen, willingly, to use people’s expectations to my own advantage. If someone expects me to be incompetent because I look a certain way, then it is not my job to change their minds. It is my job to survive and escape that situation the best I can. The people who expect me to behave a certain way because of how I look are exactly the sort of people who do not deserve to be proven wrong. So I put on the mask, and get on with my life.