Ever notice how people treat women with long blonde hair like they're public property? Like some walking, breathing Instagram filter just waiting to fulfill their child's Disney-induced hallucination? Here's a thought that might keep you up tonight: in the grand cosmic joke of human existence, we've somehow convinced ourselves that strangers owe us performances of happiness, especially when we're sad about our dead dogs. What a fascinating species we are, constructing elaborate moral hierarchies where "making a child smile" outranks "processing the death of an 11-year companion." The universe, in its infinite indifference, must be laughing its ass off.
I'm writing this with a bit of a cooler head than earlier in the day and wondering if maybe I'd gone too far. My boyfriend certainly thinks so.
I (22F) have blonde hair that goes past my hips. I love my hair and put a lot of work into maintaining it, but you can imagine the comments I sometimes get being compared to Rapunzel, etc., and normally I laugh this off. If it's a little kid, I indulge them more often than not as it's cute.
I've had a really rough day. My 11-year-old dog had to be put down due to cancer, and I'd gone from the vet's to a cafe, not wanting to go home and see her things and be reminded of it all over again. So I'd been sitting at a table with a coffee waiting for my boyfriend (23M) to finish work to come and meet me when a mother and her daughter (who looked about 8-ish—I don't know, I'm not good with kids' ages, it's a guesstimate) came up to me and asked if her daughter could take a picture with me as I "looked just like Rapunzel."
As I said, normally I'd indulge this, but I was not in the mood. I was in a low mood and had been crying a lot so felt gross. I told them thank you for that compliment but I didn't want to take a picture. The mother got really upset with me at that and told me I didn't have to be rude and how I didn't even smile, that it would cost me nothing to be nice and how her daughter was just a kid.
I admit I lost my temper with this and told her I wasn't a Disney Cast member for her to badger, that she asked and I said no. That I had just put my dog down and was hiding at this cafe as I was dreading going home to a house without my dog, that I had no interest in posing and putting on a happy face to take a picture with her child. I also started to cry again.
She got very flustered at this and rushed her child away. My boyfriend finally got to the cafe around half an hour later, and I told him what had happened and he told me I took it too far, that just because I was having a shitty day didn't mean I needed to make other people's shitty.
I ended up going home not long after. Maybe I was too rude, I don't know. It's too late to do anything about it; she was a stranger. I just feel raw emotionally. My boyfriend might be viewing my actions with a clearer head than me.
The Theater of Absurd Expectations
Let's dissect this moral clusterfuck, shall we? A woman with mermaid-length blonde hair sits in what she foolishly believed was a public space where she could mourn her dead dog without being conscripted into someone else's fairy tale. But no—her physical appearance automatically drafts her into the unpaid Disney character actor corps. Isn't that just fucking delightful?
The mother—that paragon of entitlement wrapped in the self-righteous cloak of "doing it for the children"—approaches our protagonist like a talent scout for the Make-A-Wish foundation. "You look like Rapunzel!" she proclaims, as if identifying a rare Pokémon that must be captured and documented. The implication is clear: your bodily autonomy is less important than my child's desire for a photo op. Your grief is irrelevant in the face of my offspring's momentary entertainment.
And here's where it gets truly fucking fascinating, folks. When denied this unreasonable request, the mother doesn't think, "Oh, perhaps this stranger has her own shit going on." No, she immediately transforms into the aggrieved party. "It would cost you nothing to be nice," she says, inadvertently revealing the transactional view of human interaction that's rotting society from the inside like maggots on week-old roadkill. As if kindness is a currency that strangers must dispense on demand, especially to children, those small tyrants we're collectively pretending are more valuable than adults.
Our grieving dog mom finally snaps back with a truth bomb that should have vaporized the entitled parent where she stood. "I'm not a Disney Cast member," she declares, unwittingly highlighting how we've commercialized and commodified every human interaction until we're all just unpaid performers in each other's personal Truman Shows. Her crime? Refusing to plaster on a smile while her heart bleeds for a companion who loved her without demanding she play pretend.
Then enters the boyfriend—that magnificent arbiter of reasonable behavior—who, despite not being present for the interaction, has determined she's the asshole for not maintaining the collective delusion that children's momentary disappointments are greater tragedies than adult suffering. Like some discount-store Gandalf, he dispenses his wisdom: "just because you're having a shitty day doesn't mean you need to make other peoples shitty." Ah yes, the ancient philosophical principle that your grief should be neatly contained so as not to inconvenience those making unreasonable demands of you.
The Meaningless Conclusion
In the end, what do we have? A meaningless collision of human expectations in a universe that couldn't give less of a fuck if a child got her Rapunzel photo or if a woman cried over her dead dog. We've constructed this elaborate moral theater where refusing a child is somehow worse than harassing a crying stranger, all while ignoring that in a hundred years, everyone involved in this petty drama will be dust. The only monster in this story isn't the woman who refused to perform happiness—it's our collective insistence that strangers owe us performances at all.
The true horror isn't that the woman made a child momentarily sad—it's that we've created a society where authentic human emotion must be subordinated to maintaining pleasant fictions, especially for children who need to learn that the world isn't a custom-built amusement park for their entertainment. The boyfriend, that tragic figure, can't even recognize that in forcing his grieving partner to question her completely reasonable boundaries, he's becoming the very monster he claims to abhor.
Summary for Morons Who Don't Get It
Girl sad about dead dog 😭🐕. Stranger demands free Rapunzel performance for kid 👸. Girl says no ❌. Everyone loses their shit 🤯. Boyfriend sides with strangers over girlfriend's grief 🚩. Moral of story: Your trauma doesn't matter if it inconveniences others, and long blonde hair automatically makes you public property. Congratulations on understanding society! 🏆
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