graduation from high school. (Any wonder I like my heels?) And we won't discuss the boobage; my cup(s) runneth over on a shrimpboat isn't cute! But while I was expected to fit in (my mother wanted to "stand out" and we all allowed her the spotlight); if anything, I wanted to disappear. (Shades of my own musing on a dream today?) As an adult, in business, you must stand out to some extent - especially if you are female and small. I learned to do so with my "presence" - but it wasn't easy. And one thing I will give my mother - she never wanted intelligence squelched ; if anything, she taught me to nourish it. thinking about this used to occupy my mind.. I am from the South and being a bright female was no way to fit in anywhere at anytime.. I have always felt that somehow fitting in was selling out but to stand out is welcome slings and arrows and being shot down as in who do you think your are.. these days I simply no longer care.. I do what I think is best for me if I fit in so be same for standing out.. life is too short Just came across this: . . one of the great rhetorical tricks of patriarchy is to define women's value in terms of appearance, and simultaneously to define appearance as something so utterly trivial that only completely shallow and useless creatures -- like, say, women!