Invisibility

I love that hat Baggy I want it in green.

Funny stuff, confidence. I'm actually a very quiet person (except when I'm dealing with Cubs ).

Self-confidence is a mixed blessing. I have always applied for jobs that were apparently above my competence level, and then had to work like mad to make sure I succeeded, when the unsuccessful applicants were waiting for me to fail. (Teaching in the Wirral was very incestuous). I used to look at people who were doing similar jobs and think 'I could do it as well as they do'. I have also been told many times that I must be really lacking in confidence underneath but just putting on a good show. If that makes people like me more, I don't mind, but it isn't true.
Being confident does not mean that you fail to recognise the areas where you are less capable. I can't sing, act, paint, reverse neatly, my cooking is hit and miss, I have no sense of fashion and I clearly have gone very wrong somewhere in bringing up one daughter. Other than the last 'failure', I simply tell myself that the things in which I have no talent are not important to me.
I don't know how much is down to nature and how much to nurture. I was , I am told by my sister, a very happy little girl, always ready to 'put on a show', loving the limelight, and my mother and older siblings certainly told me often that I was the best thing since the last best thing!

I have been appalled by the way some members here have been treated by their own mothers - no wonder they sometimes lack confidence.

This is my latest hat (apart from Buffs). Mine's all navy. I tried on this one first in the shop, then about three dozen others, but I knew this was the one all along. Dead comfortable

That's just it, though. Bags, and Greatnan, you will probably never be 'invisible' because of the very force of your personalities. Some of the rest of us just fade into the background, and I can't see myself buying an outlandish hat just to stand out from the crowd!

Well, there you go - he got it in one B.

Well, there you go - he got it in one B.

I read this thread and then I said to DH: "I'm trying to remember if I've ever felt invisible."

His response: "Who said that?"


And then:
"You're not an invisible sort of person."

greatnan - I see what you mean. However, I believe one can have confidence in various areas of one's life, but not necessarily in all. I feel it goes beyond that (or deeper than that) - to a knowing of oneself which accepts lack of confidence (and perhaps all that goes with that), but still being able to walk tall and be oneself regardless. I find it's about feeling whole. More to do with knowing who you are and feeling comfortable with that, not what other's may perceive one to be and the accepted attributes that may go with that.

I've often been seen to be confident, but that is, of course, not always the case. Yet it's about feeling and honouring whatever place one is at the time.

(Maybe I might have used I instead of one - as that's about owning the emotional state).

It would certainly be hard for people to forget me here, as I am the only 'Dame Anglaise' in the area and this has been true in most of the remote villages I have inhabited in France.

I don't have a problem in my local town. But then we do have the highest proportion of wrinklies in England!
I think this invisibility is a city thing with all those self important really important people rushing around in their self centred really important world.

I have a friend who can't remember faces; can't remember what the condition is called.

anno I agree, up here in the north-east I don't experience any discourtesy, let alone anything like as bad as gracesmum has.
People say hello on the street even if you don't know them and I have found the same in Staffordshire where DD1 lives.

Didn't watch DA - but indeed previous MPs for both sides of the city could answer to this. It remains to be seen whether our current one remembers me next time. I know they meet a lot of people but faces are pretty memorable to most people. And I do write to him often! Just had a long detailed letter back explaining why he thinks police and crime commissioners are the best thing since the proverbial mother's pride. (whacky brand name - does it still exist?)
butty that is exactly what the woman in the link was talking about.

Do we want to be visible?
I suppose it depends. I would not particularly want to be stared at if I had had too much plastic surgery and people were thinking: too much plastic surgery.
I do remember looking at Mary Archer once when she was giving a talk and thinking : wow, great plastic surgery! (but even if I was in the market I cannot imagine saying to MA - what's the name of your surgeon!!!!!)
But there are possibilities that stop short of pink hair (one day, when it goes properly white!)
Stand as if you are proud to be here. wear bright colours. smile and engage with people etc
And yes there are a lot of miserable so and sos in customer service in the urban SE. Drive an hour north into W Midlands and it is very different.

Butty - don't you agree that an intrinisic belief in yourself is what gives you confidence?

Yes but in the carpark lift yesterday someone(I've met them once)recognised us(DH 6'2" me 5'9"-3") and they had to explain-very embarassing-she was small and grey- we should all wear name badges . Very useful

Thank you JessM - actually I wonder if the local MP and the man in my anecdote might be one and the same person? No names, no pack drill, but he might have been a member of staff at Downton Abbey?

I don't think it's just a matter of confidence or assertiveness - that can be fudged and learned (no bad thing I hasten to add). It's about an intrinsic belief in who you are and your beliefs and place in the world that matters.

I saw this woman give a talk last week. She is tiny, with a soft Glaswegian accent, and was wearing an outfit that looked like she had stepped off the set of a science fiction movie.
Black top, big black baggy pants that are hard to describe, and a kind of long sculpted looking waistcoat thing in stiff fabric that flared out at the bottom about 6 inches off the floor. She was an excellent (really excellent) speaker, which was just as well because she was competing for our attention with how she looked.

No one could ever not notice her coming into a room.

www.id-ology.org/idologists.html

I don't think it's anything to do with how you look. I was always invisible when out with my first idiot husband even though I was attractive and smartly dressed, simply because he made a lot of noise and demanded attention.
Now, my friend and I go out, she is tiny,71 and quite flamboyant and loud, and we are never ignored!
If we go for lunch, we chat to all the staff, ask lots of questions and laugh a lot with people sitting near us!
It's definitely confidence as Greatnan said

sook, surely manners in South East and North East Cheshire can't be that different? Our little town is a friendly place on the whole.

Join the club allie it is a tad disconcerting when that happens.
gracesmum you don't look invisible to me. Chic and stylish I would say and you have a 'way' with scarves that I envy.
But maybe we need to make more of a statement. Big jewellery that kind of thing. HATS!
I dug out a fancy Chinese hat and scarf yesterday that i don't wear often. (I thought I would dress up to go to see my cousin.) Then i remembered why, the hat does not stay where put. But it is a fine object bought from Shanghai Tang in HK by DH when he was working there 18 years ago.

Don't let me stop the thread, I seem to be good at that......

(Regal wave)

Oh, thank you, Jess and Ana!