I have been with my partner for two years now. My mother has always told me to show less skin and has almost called me a whore for wearing a bralette. So i am already pretty insecure about dressing up to parties. Mind you, i do live in a conservative country where women are often judged or victim blamed for the way they dress up.
My partner and i once went out for a drive and on our way back visited a convenience store. I was wearing a fairly decent top which at a certain position though, showed a little bit of my cleavage. Now i don’t really have much to show but you know how men can be. I got a few stares and looks which i actually did not notice but my partner did.
He immediately told me to fix my top which made me feel a bit odd and conscious. I brought this up with him later in the car and told him that it made me feel really conscious about my body and that in the country that we live in, its practically unavoidable to get a few stares. i told him that this kind of a situation is way out of my control.
he disagreed. He believes that we as women do have some sort of control over the situation and that by covering up i can avoid these things. I explained to him that i still get stared at even if i cover my entire body up.
he went on to say that he got angry that people were looking at me and that he was uncomfortable with this situation and he was just trying to protect me.
I felt really helpless when he said that because why is the onus on me to always be covered up to avoid situations such as these when actually theres no guarantee that it will keep me safe?
We do live in an urban city and after having lived with my parents most of my life, i loved expressing myself through dressing up after moving out.
How do i better handle this discussion?