Industrial Zone Gender

I’m no longer a Cube Slave.

I have a better job (own office! ye-hah) working in an industrial area in the deepest, big- box storiest burbs.

Some city habits I’ve brought with me, like wanting to walk around outside for fresh air.  I seem to be the only one doing this.  Everyone else outside is there to do something work related, like digging a ditch.

One day I was walking around the zone, trying to get my daily constitutional, when I realised it reminded me of something. Or somewhere. First of all, there were a lot of men around and hardly any women and the men were really aware of my presence. In Office World, women are everywhere and the men couldn’t care less unless you are a knock-out or about to knock them out.     Here  there are a lot less of us and even fewer of us working outside.   Just being a woman is enough to cause the men to stop what they’re doing and check you out from under the hard hat.

That men-being-aware-of-women feeling reminded me of travelling in the middle east.  There was always sexual tension.   Sometimes it felt full of resentment, as if none of those men had ever had the chance of a shag and weren’t likely to get one soon either, and I was taunting them in my western clothes.    I’d thought an ankle length skirt was nun-ish when I’d bought it in London, but it turned out it was the equivalent of wearing a crotchless bikini in some villages.   Men stared at my ankles.

Admittedly, I probably got more attention in the middle east because I wasn’t wearing a headscarf or a floaty tent thing,  and here, in Industrial Zone, I am THE ONLY WOMAN walking around who isn’t in fluorescent safety gear holding a STOP sign.  So yes.   Yes, indeedy.  I am special. 

I recommend working in an industrial zone if you’re single.  FYI.

Now they just need to get some sidewalks in the ‘Zone because I’m tired of off-roading in my cute boots and/or nearly being swiped by a truck.

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