At my mother-in-law\u2019s birthday last weekend, I wore ripped jeans, a crop top, and a jacket \u2014 nothing outrageous, just something I felt confident in. The moment I walked in, she scanned me from head to toe and pressed her lips together. I noticed, but chose to ignore it and enjoy the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, once everyone had arrived, she decided to make her point loudly: \u201cBack in my day, women didn\u2019t need to show skin to feel confident.\u201d My face burned. I\u2019d heard comments about my clothes before, but this one was aimed at me in front of the whole family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before I could stop myself, I replied, \u201cOr maybe you just didn\u2019t have the confidence to dress how you wanted.\u201d The room fell silent. She gasped, complained about \u201crespect,\u201d then burst into tears and ran to her room. Suddenly, I was the villain who \u201cruined her birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t yell, I didn\u2019t swear \u2014 I simply stood up for myself after yet another jab. Now I\u2019m being told to apologize, but honestly, I think respect should go both ways. She publicly shamed me, and I responded. So tell me \u2014 am I really the one who owes an apology here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At my mother-in-law\u2019s birthday last weekend, I wore ripped jeans, a crop top, and a jacket \u2014 nothing outrageous, just something I felt confident in. The moment… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":163,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15908,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15906\/revisions\/15908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}