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He Punched Me For Looking Good
How Far We’ve Come
She was on the train when it happened.
She was wearing a tracksuit and a Ralph Lauren jacket that her brother had given her, nothing special, just a young woman on her way to a date.
That’s when he looked at her and said: “Do you think it’s okay for you to look better than me?”
And then he hit her.
Right there, on the train, in front of twenty people.
A punch to the arm because she had dared to dress well.
Because she had dared to exist in a way that made him feel small. Because, in his sick mind, her beauty was an affront to the fragile masculinity he carried like an open wound.
Twenty people saw.
Twenty people stayed silent.
Twenty people witnessed a man assault a woman because she “looked better than him” and nobody did anything. This is where we’ve gotten to.
Don’t come at me with bullshit about “isolated cases” or “complex situations.”
This is the raw reality of thousands of women who live with men who see them as property, as extensions of their own ego, as objects that must be…
