Man or Bear
Permission to Kill | Piere Smith | Digital
Man or a Bear by Olivia Ullman
A girl once wore a yellow long sleeve shirt and navy blue shorts. Yellow, a color of happiness and joy, with yellow one can imagine a smile, expressing a simile that has no fear or care in the world. This girl had no fear when she ventured out to hang and watch tv with a male classmate. This girl had no care in the world when deciding to sleep in his dorm. But he tainted that yellow shirt the moment he touched her, forcing her to a most hellish movement every woman dreads. Now that yellow shirt is hanging on an exhibit wall, carrying with it that girl's happiness. She doesn’t need a shirt with yellow any more.
This is why women choose the bear.
A girl once wore a blue sweater with a tank top and jeans. The night she wore the blue sweater the cold night air was biting at her skin. That sweater was her protection from that harshness, shielding her from the reminder of her vulnerability to the factors that wish to cause her harm. That sweater was her consideration of not trying to make him feel uncomfortable with her body and so the blue sweater covered her up, what little protection it gave her. That sweater didn’t protect her from him.
This is why women choose the bear.
A girl once wore a white tank top with pink flowers and white shorts. This girl had a boyfriend as the classic teenage girl cliche does. She was 16 and hadn't experienced the true wonders of the world yet and hadn't lived her life to the fullest. She was young and wanted more in life but he didn't. He saw his girlfriend as someone he wanted to spend his future with, to start it right then. He kept pushing and pushing that lifestyle on her, a lifestyle no 16 year old girl is ready for. Then one day, he didn’t push a lifestyle on her; he pushed her down on his mother's sofa. He broke up with her 3 months later. That lifestyle was never what he truly wanted from her.
This is why women choose the bear.
Two women wore some pajamas, comfort attire , lined up with one in front of the other. What little confort it brought them when those men came for them. Another wore overalls with a white t-shirt. Oh how that girl loved those overalls, that t-shirt was her favorite. She wore it with love, feeling safe on that hot summer day. The scorching sun did nothing but push that girl into the house of the boy who offered her lemonade. She left that house to never wear those overalls again.
This is why women choose the bear.
A little girl wore a dress, a dress as cute as can be. The girl who wore it could be no more than 3 but that didn’t stop him. A baby no more than 8 months old wore a onesie covered with zebra stripes and pink colors but that didn’t stop him. Now it’s more heartbreaking as the age keeps getting lower and lower and then one realizes there's no limit with age as it now comes to a 4 month old. She couldn’t talk, she had yet to embrace her glorious power of speech and he knew that. Then again and again more outfits popup a baby's diaper, a little girl's school uniform, a dress and a doctor's coat. These are only the smallest fraction of the scorned and violated women of the world. Their souls so broken, it can never be fixed. What was taken from them can never be restored and it’s all thanks to the despicable actions of men.
This is why women choose the bear.
In the quiet recesses of the mind, where instincts are woven with threads of experience, lies an insidious awareness—a subtle consciousness passed down from mother to daughter, sister to sister, from one generation to the next. Every woman recognizes this fear, and oh, how it weighs on them. It’s so ancient yet ever-present, always lurking in her thoughts with every unfamiliar encounter. A bear, a creature with a tower form and primal gaze displays no illusion of friendship or kindness, it’s what one sees, an animal that acts on instinct, its acts of violence resulted from need, a motive so clear one can look through as if it was a window. What about the man —ah, the man, he who wears the mask of deceptions, drapes himself with the cloak that hides his true nature, using his serpent silver tongue uttering sweet words of promising safety only to take off that mask and cloak to strike when a woman's back is turned.
A woman is well attuned to a darkness that resides in a man's eye, apprehending how just any man can take advantage of her trust, abuse her empathy and turn it into a weapon to be used against her. A bear might be dangerous, a posing threat but a posing threat that is predictable. A bear belongs to nature making it a force to be reckoned with but only when provoked will it attack. However, is it not a man who carries the horrifying essence of unpredictability, who can release the storm of cruelty that can destroy the very light from a woman that can reside within himself.
Is it not a man who can rape a woman.
Not all men are capable of this; not all men are monsters but it’s their past sinful atrocities that has created a perception of men as unknowable danger making them a predator no bear can ever match to. So as a woman walks down a dark alley on a quiet night or into the crowded streets, she chooses the bear over the man but not as a matter of safety versus danger, but choosing certainty over turmoil — the certainty of an opposing danger any woman can understand over a terror she can never foresee.
