I'm a Clean Person

I don’t really wear makeup nor do I regularly style my hair. I’m often in secondhand clothing that fits a size or so too big. I have a lot of belongings in a small space and a drawer full of snacks. Because of this, people think I’m not properly hygienic, that I’m messy, disorganized. They think I’m a hoarder or a distraction to the goals of others or that I eat poorly.
But they’re wrong.
I don’t really wear makeup but I wash my face everyday and despite what someone thought, it’s not just with a bar of soap. I have a stupid amount of cleansers, scrubs, creams, serums, toners and moisterizers. I rotate and mix and match each day depending on what my face is doing. I don’t do much with my hair in terms of styling but I wash it every second day and condition it daily. If I’m feeling wild, I’ll use a hair mask on it. My clothes don’t always fit, but sometimes I want an oversized look and they’re all clean. I do the laundry every week and I rarely wear a shirt more than once in that time unless I was predominantly loafing. Though I have a lot of whatever in my house, it’s organized and has a place that was specifically picked out. I played tetris with my belongings when I moved here and made sure my house made sense and looked neat. I’m not a hoarder though I keep little stupid items like random screws or ribbon or containers because they always end up useful to me at some point. Despite my love of snacks, I still eat good and proper meals, I still aim to have a balanced diet. Just because going to college or university was never my plan, I don’t just sit around and do nothing nor am I stupid. I have a job, I haven't not had one since about the summer of tenth grade. I still work hard and leave the house even though I’m not going to school. It’s how I’ve been able to afford all the aforementioned whatever that I’ve bought. I wasn’t great academically but that doesn’t mean I’m not intelligent.
I’ve been judged or underestimated so many times because of what I look like and where I live. My hair is short so I’m not feminine. My face is plain so I’m not put together. I don’t always dress to show my figure so I’m sloppy. One look at me and some just assume I don’t clean my room-house even though I do that every week. I wasn’t allowed to room with a friend because I was thought to be a distraction since I wasn’t going to school. For one reason or another, I have had to work relentlessly to prove my worth as a person just because I don’t want to change my whole existence to follow what society wants ladies to aspire to.
Why do I have to have a full face of makeup, long hair, and form-fitting clothes to convince people that I take care of myself when men can just shampoo their hair and have women swooning over them? The bar is set so low for lads when it comes to self-care and meanwhile, women have to pole vault to get over ours. I, and others that I’ve talked to have been treated differently based solely on if we were wearing makeup or close-fitting clothing. There’s more respect from people. Even if they see you consistently and know you’re the same person regardless, that respect is higher when you look more “womanly”. Unfortunately, if you still don’t have the more “main womanly” components, that respect will always lack slightly. If I’m with a friend and we both wear dresses but she has long hair, she will naturally get a more positive reaction because girls can’t have short hair. If she were in trousers and I was still in a dress, the reaction towards me would still be less because hair is one of the more “main” factors of a clean, put together lady. Long hair, makeupped face, and accentuated body. You have to deal with all three to look “good”, but you can get away with less if the people you’re with do less than you. I’m usually the one with the least completion. 
It just baffles me how much one’s appearance can condemn them. One proper look at me and you’d see that my hair isn’t greasy, my clothes are in good shape, if just too big, and if there’s a smell on me, it’s cologne and/or deodorant and not the stench of someone who doesn’t bathe. Yet, since I don’t fall into what a proper woman should look like, my whole being is assumed and a personality is assigned. I get reduced to a sloppy tomboy that lives in  a mess and works retail because she’s too dumb for school or a better job. And then I have to fight to get my own personality back, to prove that I am a complex individual that has been improperly summed up. Sometimes I win that fight, sometimes I don’t. 
The lad I mentioned in my “people want to be oppressed” log was one of the opponents I lost against. He decided my whole being and after that, it was impossible to convince him otherwise. I never became more than the dumb, naive tomboy in his mind. I got treated differently because of it. My personality was quite similar to one of my friends but she was the epitome of girly. She’s all pink and rainbows and flowers and pastels, but we shared a ton of opinions and outlooks, we had similar childish mannerisms, we even had almost the same figures. However, she was adored by him and I was far beneath him. When I finally noticed that he treated me worse, I tried to look more like my friend, donning dresses and skirts, dressing more to my figure. Alas, my color pallet is that of a leaf pile and my hair was still short and he had already assigned me my personality. 
I’m tired of people deciding who I am based on a half-assed glance. I’ve worked hard on who I am. I’ve worked hard on molding my faults into amusing quirks. I’ve worked hard to curate words and phrases that naturally enhance my character, showcase the fact I have more than one brain cell, and to amuse myself. I’ve made a lot of peace with my body over the years, and though there’s still much to work on, I don’t hate all of me. I’ve honed my living space to something I’m proud of and feel a sense of home in. I’ve put the work in to make me satisfied with who I am and how I present myself and I will not stand to have all of that rendered null and void because it’s not what is expected of me. 
They say “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” I reckon because some folks are so damn stupid that they think they know a person soley based on surface-level observation. There’s a getting-to-know-people phase before friendships and relationships for a reason, you can’t possibly know a person simply by noting their presence. By projecting what you think someone’s like without actually bothering to absorb who they actually are and treating them in a way based on your own conclusions is, in the least, dense but can grow to become cruel. It can warp a person’s personal image of themselves. I’m constantly questioning if I’m pretty or capable of being beautiful without having to wear a prom dress or stage makeup or grow my hair out. I wouldn’t have these questions if the stigma around gender nonconforming women wasn’t a thing. It’s not always obvious, but it’s there, just as much as the mentality that fat equals ugly is a thing. 
This is a mindset that has to be dissolved. It’s lazy, disrespectful, and downright moronic. What a terrible world it would be if all we did was assume one another’s personalities. What empty people we would become by twisting the truths of others to fit the lies of our own visions of them.