Perplexing....

Today I was in Barbara mode again and I wonder if that had any impact on a really weird incident today.

This project I am involved with is huge, there are hundreds of operators on various pieces of equipment. I'd guess about 1/3 are women, and of those there are a few, though certainly not the majority that would have elicited wolf whistles from construction workers a couple of decades ago. This sort of behavior isn't tolerated of course, but you hear flirtatious tones going both ways on the radio at times.

I arrived at a destination to do a job and backed in slightly before another operator. As they started to back alongside me, the individual who had control of that section of the project called out to the person following me and said to give me enough room to pull out. (They had, but it was just a safety concern because of size, proximity, weight, height, soft material below, etc. Better safe than sorry.) I thought nothing at the time of it since such instructions are routine. My impression was that the operator beside me was also male. The person calling out the warning said "Move over a bit and leave 123 enough room so he can pull out when he is done." Now, the he could have been referring generically, and is usually how we speak of the combo of a piece of equipment and its driver. Like as in , "Oh, go on around the 456, he is locked down." even if the operator is a woman.

So as I was leaving, with my piece of equipment between the man running the equipment managing that area and the second operator, he came out on his deck and waved, and raised his shirt with a grin in the universal, "show me you tits" international sign language. As Barbara, I went ahead and gave him a grin back and a wave and drove off shaking my head. I had actually thought of bringing a wig and wearing it under my hard hat. In this case though my military looking high and tight hair style was mostly hidden by the hard hat as would a woman's hai with her hair tucked up as many do. Wen you add tinted safety glasses, my small frame, thin arms, and whatever body language I was giving off by my posture, you can see how he could make the mistake.

I had no interest in correcting him as such an incident would both embarrass him, and provide fodder for those that might want to in good fun take a poke at my perceived manliness. I took an operator break thereafter and sashayed off my truck and called Dee to tell her about it. With a wan smile on my face, I decided to continue the "act". I doubt he could gain much of an impression from the several hundred yards away I was but it gave me a grin to keep it up. I walked more or less normally but with arms loose by my side, palms a bit forward. I let a little swing in my hips, careful not to get carried away with it since that is a skill I just don;t seem to have a natural knack for. When I want to walk like a girl, I just unlearn all the rigid ways I learned to hold my body to "walk like a man". I did a bit of a Donna Reed in reverse gliding up the stairs to my cab, and motored away.

All in all it was interesting.

It reminded me of the day I was feeling "Barbara-ish" and gave the fey wave to the girl in the cab adjacent to me. At the time when she waved back similarly, I didn't think she in anyway would have assumed I was a girl too, but now I wonder.