Promising People You're Not A Pervert Probably Won't Help Your Case

I'm not often in a position where I'm overly concerned that people will consider me a pervert. When assigned to go somewhere that made me uncomfortable and hang out there for twenty minutes, I decided to go to Victoria's Secret in the Church Street Mall. It worked far better than I hoped it had.


At first I was going to go play basketball with the guys that play every Monday in the gym, but I figured I was too likely to chicken out of that. I needed to go downtown anyway, so I figured Victoria's Secret was somewhere I could just walk into, and hopefully avoid eye contact with everyone. I know some guys that are totally okay with walking around in womens' underwear stores. I am not one of those people.


Pretty much as soon as I walked in the door, I was asked if I was finding everything alright. I was doing my best to stay glued to my phone, partly because I needed to be live-tweeting about the experience but mostly because I wanted to retreat as far as I could from reality. A few minutes later, I had been asked if I needed help by every employee in the store, as far as I know. They probably figured I was looking for something for a girlfriend or whatever, I'm sure, but I was convinced they thought I was just being creepy.


I had a really hard time just walking into the store. When I got to it, I looked around to see if there were any other stores around that might be less agonizingly awkward but would still be uncomfortable to be in, but no dice. I had to do it. For the whole time I was in the store, I had an immense feeling of stress. I ended up not being able to stay for the whole twenty minutes because that feeling quickly became unbearable. When I left I was highly relieved, but afterward, whenever I thought back on it, I'd shudder. It wasn't the underwear that bothered me--it was the obvious scrutiny of everyone in the store wondering why I was there. Whether that was all in my head, I have no idea, but it was pretty awful nonetheless.


I have a very strong (and often irrational) fear of what people think of me. I knew that wherever I went for this assignment I would probably have to face that, but this was definitely worse than I had anticipated. It goes to show how much I need to get over myself when it comes to putting myself in situations like this, because I'll have to if I ever want to pursue journalism in any professional capacity.