‘Me Too’ Necklace Photo Credit: Isaac Wasuck

ABOUT Me Too

Me too- the eye-opening movement.  I honestly felt pretty lucky most of my life.  I wasn’t molested as a child. I wasn’t physically abused by boyfriends.  I mostly related to the movement by the more minor offenses of catcalls, prejudices(sometimes for my benefit) from employers, and the overall heightened awareness for my safety due to uncomfortable leering and aggressively being pursued by men… until I met Rapey David.  I was single for a good stretch of time and my attempts to connect with new people through salsa dance classes and volunteer work were a bust. A customer at my place of work was on a solo vacation, charismatic, and invited me and my coworker out for some company at a bar with music.  My coworker and friend thought he would be a gentleman so I put myself out there. Unfortunately, Rapey David wasn’t a good listener and prioritized his agenda. Without going into details, I learned the lesson about trusting people to respect and not cross a line that I verbally put down. I even confronted Rapey David about feeling not heard and listened to and he said: “I thought you changed your mind because of your body language.”  

My frustration with feeling not heard by men runs deeper than my incident with Rapey David.  I have felt unheard and not treated as an equal by several partners as well. In recent years, I have identified how draining the frustration caused by misogynistic behavior has been on me. My “irritant” or “succubus” is the socially constructed toxic male ego: dominance, aggression, the belief that you as a man are much better or more important than other people(especially women), or behavior that shows this.

Did you know that clams and oysters create pearls whenever there is an irritant, whether it be a splinter or a parasite?  They slowly coat the irritant with layers of mother of pearl until it is a bead known as the much-desired pearl. If I could coat things with mother of pearl and make it obsolete, I would make my pearl over toxic masculinity.

What better symbol of toxic masculinity than the leather of a bulls ball?!? I bezel set the leather in sterling silver and sewed tiny beads of mother of pearl to its surface.  The mother of pearl doesn’t completely engulf the leather; it takes time to make a pearl. This necklace can be used as a reminder that every woman is a warrior.

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