Do you need any help?

I just finished shopping at Lowe’s for some lumber and other hardware to build something for my kitchen. Afterwards I texted my husband and said, “No one asked if I needed any help today, and that felt pretty damn good.“ Usually when I am in Lowes or any hardware section of a store I tend to fight making eye contact with anyone because so often when I get asked if I need help, it’s with a tone that implies I don’t know what I’m looking at. My stagecraft professor from college can tell you that I was not the valedictorian of my scene shop days, but I can build stuff by myself, and I have a pretty good general knowledge of how most tools in a shop work, and I can use most of them proficiently. Why is it that when I walk into a hardware store I feel like I need to have a sign around my neck that reads, “Yes, I’m a young woman, but I know what I’m doing. If you wouldn’t ask a man if he needs help, don’t ask me.” There have been times where I couldn’t find something for the life of me, but I didn’t want to ask for help because then they would start asking me what I needed it for, questioning whether or not that was what I really needed to buy, blah blah blah. (Disclaimer: There are definitely employees of these stores that actually are interested and actually are trying to be helpful and don’t doubt my abilities based on gender and age. But that is not always the case.) (Second Disclaimer: Lowe’s has an app that tells you exactly where an item is. It’s amazing.) It says something about our culture that I automatically go on the defense when I walk through the doors. I don’t really have a strong thesis or solution or what-have-you for this, but it needed to be said. So I did. I was listening to a podcast earlier that discussed how it is so good that women are coming forward and speaking up in situations like those with Weinstein and Cosby, but that what we also need is people speaking up against the medium-level stuff, the assault and harrasment that isn’t rape but still needs to be reported, so that people can’t sit back and say, “Well, I never did THAT.” So I’m calling out the low-level systemic misogynistic stuff, too. Maybe this will be a start to a series of blogs around the theme, “If I had a penis, this wouldn’t be an issue...”