"You're seeping. Here. Look at this."
Another woman said that's not a problem and can be used to your advantage but couldn't seem to meaningfully explain how. She ended with "You have their attention." and my recollection is that conversation sort of stopped there with no real enlightenment happening.
Most women seem to be groomed from birth to respond to the needs of others. Male attention given to a woman is generally understood to be about meeting male needs.
It's generally not about meeting her needs. It's usually got nothing to do with what she wants out of life.
No matter how much education and professional accomplishment she has, she is supposed to be willing to abandon her dreams of a future and slot herself conveniently into his life should he fall for her and wish to marry her. In the US, this goes to our highest office where the wife of the President is expected to play hostess at the White House like a glorified homemaker no matter what her career accomplishments to date.
I saw a Reddit discussion recently where foreigners were saying things like "Americans have a weird interest in the wife of their president. I think the wife of our president ...maybe has black hair?" And that was surprising and interesting to me.
Catching a man's attention can be downright dangerous for a woman. That danger can grow if he is a powerful man. I recently saw a video speculating that Marilyn Monroe was actually murdered over her affairs with powerful politicians.
Culturally, women are expected to be the playthings of men. It can be dangerous for a woman to defy the expectation that if attention is on her, she is supposed to cave to serving the emotional needs of others.
She is supposed to stop what she is doing and give them her attention as a de facto slave, as if her time is of no value, as if her interests do not matter, as if her goals are irrelevant. If she tries to use the fact that there are eyes on her to promote her own goals, that may not go well.
But I think that is the secret: If there are eyes on you, you need to decide what you want those people to see and hear. You need to decide what your goal is and think about how to effectively promote that rather than going along with the cultural expectation that you will serve as an exotic pet for any and every man who happens to be momentarily taken with you.
I'm not interested in being an exotic pet. My internet acquaintance with a man I long ago dubbed Jack on my blogs has taught me that not all men see women as nothing but exotic pets, which makes it vastly easier in the landscape of my own mind to say "No thank you." because the offer is not tempting.
A man like Jack is temptation. A man wanting me to throw away all of my own hopes and dreams for the future to be a bauble on his arm and have my life revolve around his is not.