I recently found myself in the same type of situation, and although I'm sure it has happened before, this was the first time I'd been fully aware of it.

I take the bus everyday, like many other people, and last week I was sitting two rows back from the "reserved seats" in the front of the bus. I was on a route that I'd only traveled once before, so I was looking across the bus, through the window, to be sure not to go past the street I was looking for. The lady whose head I was looking over was having a conversation with another woman and her daughter sitting next to her (these last two had their backs to me).

During a lull in their conversation the lady motioned for the mother to lean closer to her. Once the silent tid-bit had been shared the mother turned her head and stared right at me, then proceeded to tell her daughter (who I guessed was around 9 years old) to look at me. They then started up their conversation again, and I was their topic of choice! The mother began lecturing the two on which piercings she felt were acceptable, and which were not. She then commented on my intelligence level (actually, on the apparent lack there of) and how she would disown her daughter if she ever came home "all full of holes".

I am a 23 year old bisexual woman, a college graduate (4.0 GPA) and will be attending university next fall. I have traveled across Canada, and internationally, speak three languages fluently, and have 17 piercings. The lady and her friends could only see my septum and lip piercings, what, I wonder, would their opinion be of my nipple ring?

I sat there listening in complete awe of their total lack of tact firstly, and their total show of disrespect to me, I actually had to keep my jaw from dropping. I felt like an exotic zoo animal, caged to be gawked at by strangers, like an innocent person accused of a crime, with no opportunity to defend myself. In the end I did nothing, my instinct was to leave them with a flea in their ears, but then I would have stooped to their level and that was not an acceptable option.

Instead I got off at my stop and walked away with my head held high. I live my life as I feel it should be lived, all the things I do, I do for myself, not for anyone else. I have lost jobs and friends because of my piercings and lifestyle, but I have also gained a hundred times more than I've lost, and what's more I am truly happy, and in the end that is all that matters.

I too would much prefer answering a stupid question than to be gawked at, but if not given the opportunity I take that as a sign that the "gawker" is not ready for the answer. Some people are content to live within the confines of what they know, and will fight vehemently to keep it that way. I am a pacifist and have long since decided that the confrontations that often arise from provoking enlightenment, for the most part, only serve to anger and frustrate. No one will open their mind when they are defending their intellect.

So that is what I do, I know many people would say I should have spoken up, but a crowded bus was neither the time or the place, and I'm bloody shy to boot! But I walked away with my self-esteem in-tact, and, if anything, a firmer resolve to go on living the way I do.