Microaggressions are everywhere: at school (“You’re Asian, you must be good at math!”), at lunch (“Do you really need to eat that?”) and even in your own family (“So when are you having kids?”)
Women face these kinds of sexist and racist jabs daily, and it’s not always possible to come up with a witty response on the spot. That’s why we love comedy writer Claire Ayoub‘s new YouTube series, “A Series of Comebacks.”
Watch the first three episodes below:
Ayoub tells the Ms. Blog she started the series because “people say terrible things to each other all the time.”
She adds,
Whether it’s about our looks, weight, job, gender, life choices or attitude, our friends, family, co-workers and even strangers feel like they have the right to comment. … The worst part is when these people think their words are helpful, such as, ‘You’d be so pretty if you lost weight.’ Comments like that are so easy to internalize and we repeat them to ourselves over and over until we begin to think they’re true.
Ayoub says that while she doesn’t want people to follow her more “eccentric” advice explicitly (see above), she does want “people to feel brave” and to know that “no matter what someone says, it’s more than OK to be who [you] are. If someone says otherwise, silence isn’t the only option—now [you] have something to say.”
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