My Vagina Is Not Your Income

Disclaimer: If you formally employ me, or are a relative, it’s probably best if you don’t read this. It would just embarrass both of us.

People spend quite a lot of time talking about vaginas these days. Lord knows I do. I tried to think about something else to blog about for a change, realised I only know about feminism and lesbians, and gave up. So vaginas it is.

I find it quite alarming how they seem to have developed monetary value within the last twenty years or so. To have a vagina worthy of modern, media standards it has become necessary for women to effectively pay rent. At minimum women are now expected to at least ‘spruce up’ their downstairs, whatever the hell that actually means, and while the cost of razors totted up over a life time may not exactly purchase a house, it could probably buy you quite a few more fancy dinners and tickets to see Westside Story than you would have had otherwise. For the slightly more hardcore who fancy waxing, it becomes vital to fork out roughly once a month to employ someone to hot glue strips of fabric to the single most sensitive area of your body, and then violently rip them off again. Which is painful both physically and financially. For the ones who have signed a contract to the Fancy Genital overlord, vajazzling comes into play. The singular and ancient art of paying someone to stick rhinestones and bits of glitter to a place where there should be fluff thankfully seems to be losing the sudden burst of popularity it had, and personally I think we’re better off for it leaving. If I remember rightly, there were about two weeks in 2011 where everyone turned round and shouted ‘pejazzle’ (vajazzling's male equivalent) at each other, screamed and never, ever mentioned it again.

I still don’t really know what the point is in the ripping and the hot glue and the glitter. Some people seem to think it’s nice for someone you’re having sex with, but if your partner won’t sleep with you unless you have diamonds stuck to your foof, I think you might be sleeping with the wrong people. Frankly they should be grateful that they get to sleep with you at all, without kicking up a fuss about whether or not a grumpy beautician has tidied up for them first.

Speaking of Lady Ga-gardens, Lady Gaga apparently stripped off in London’s G-A-Y club last week. Some gay men witnessed her bottom. It was big news. Just like the time every female celebrity ever got into a car at a funny angle while wearing a skirt, or wore something chiffon based under bad lighting. Do you know when I last read an article about a bloke accidently showing a bit too much skin? Never, that’s when. No one gets paid for writing about men having a touch too much champagne before getting into a cab badly. No man has ever thought “Jesus, I possess pubic hair, something both men and women have had since the dawn of time. I should probably RIP IT OUT ON THE OFF CHANCE SOMEONE UNEXPECTEDLY TRIES TO HAVE SEX WITH ME IN A VERY BRIGHTLY LIT ROOM.” We have developed a culture where we pay people make sure our vaginas look good enough, on the off chance someone else is being paid to write about it. You might as well keep a small till in your knickers, just in case.

Unless you like doing all that, which is fine. If you want to, please be my guest. But just ask yourself first if you’re doing it because you like having genitalia that doubles up as a handy disco ball, or because you’ve just been told you should like it by someone else. If it’s the latter, I suggest you either ignore them or have a very lengthy chat. If it’s the former, please come to parties with me. At the end of the day, vaginas were meant to push out screaming humans, and give birth (ooh, satire). Do whatever you like with yours but make sure you do it for you and not to attract sexual partners with the brains of magpies.

Cheers. 

Joining The Debate Of The Genders

Ah, there’s nothing to beat the promise of a newly opened, blank Work document. Yeah, so it’s been a while, but I was busy. Also lazy. Mostly lazy.  I did get a job though. I haven’t actually started it yet, but I did get one. So that’s something.

For a while, I’ve wanted to take on the age-old question: which hurts more, period pains, or getting kicked in the balls. I will tell you here and now, it is period pains. The question used to be a kick to the balls, or childbirth. Ahahahaha, nice one, patriarchy. I’d like to see a man be kicked in the balls and end up screaming in agony for twelve hours, with a cocktail of drugs and the possibility of having to be cut open while still wide awake. We once asked our old English teacher what it was like to have a caesarean. “Horrible,” She said. “It feels like someone’s opened you up, and scooped out all of your organs, because all of the weight leaves so quickly. I felt empty. And in pain. There was a lot of blood.”

But we know how rubbish giving birth is. We can rant, and yell about it for hours. There have been books written about it, and it gets pretty decent coverage, media wise. We all know the image of a woman propped up in a hospital bed, dripping with sweat, screaming, with her BFF and her mother holding her legs in the air. We don’t talk about period pains. There’s no woman on telly, lying on the floor punching whatever’s nearby, while crying and swearing I the same breath. No book character has ever been forced to not go and punch the baddy because their legs age too much. And I’m pretty sure this is why men idiots people who have never experienced PMS think that it isn’t so bad, and white it off as women being hysterical. As was the case for any woman with a mental illness, until about sixty years ago.* No one ever talks about PMS, because we know that since it will simply happen again in two to three weeks time, we may as well just pop some pain killers and get on with it. However being kicked in the balls happened rarely, and only if you’re acting like an idiot, and therefore deserve it. Or if you play rugby, I suppose. I wouldn’t know, organised sport give me hives.

I was lucky enough to get a group of friends who do talk about period pain. This turned out to be amazingly useful:  one friend tends to throw up and faint around her time of the month. When it came to half seven in the morning, and I was just waking up on the kitchen floor so I could vomit again, I knew it was probably just PMS and there was no need to call an ambulance. When I opened my eyes, I could see the cat sitting next to my face, licking his paws. This is how I will die, I thought. With my cat waiting to eat my flesh. It was a cheerful day, all told.

There was a woman on twitter a few days ago, talking about the fact that she used to get nosebleeds at the same time as cramps. As well as smacking of poor biological wiring, it’s also not something generally caused by being kicked in the balls. Count yourselves lucky, dammit.

I think recently, however, we have got better at talking about the sheer, driving agony of PMS. And I hope we carry on. It may be a sore subject, but as with the state of the economy and Miley Cyrus’s career, it’s better if we talk about it. Last year while on holiday, I found myself face down on the sofa, physically unable to move from the pain. And my step brother made the noble decision to remain in the same room and talk to me. Which was nice, and also surprising. Which is why my little nugget of advice for now is to all those with a uterus: talk about it, have a cry but ultimately don’t let it stop you from being fierce. To all those without a uterus: be sympathetic without being patronising, and don’t act in a way that results in foot to genital contact. Idiots.

Sorry for the over-zealous use of italics. That’s a lie; I’m not sorry at all.

*Fun story – my great-great-Grandmother had eight children and an abusive husband. This led to her having mild depression, something that could be treated with bed rest and a divorce. Instead, she was locking in an asylum and accused of being mad, simply because she was unhappy with her home life. In the end, from what we know from her medical records, she died of influenza after she’d been there for several years, time which she spent crying and begging to go home, until she did eventually go mad. Moral of the story: women know when shit’s going down, and accusing them of lying/being hysterical/attention seeking LEADS TO BAD THINGS.

I’ll see ya’ll soon. I’ve got a lot of stuff left to shout about.

                                                                                                                                                     

Shouting At Cosmopolitan. Again.

It's that time of the month again; when I finally get around to reading the Cosmo magazine I bought three weeks ago. And yes, you're right. I am procrastinating from English revision. I usually don't really have an issue with any of the articles Cosmo prints - although there are always flaws depending on your opinion. How ever one page in this months issue really ticked me of, and it is called "Expert Toning Tips For...", sub-headed 'We've got the best exercises for your body shape." This then followed by a series of photos of slightly 'deformed' Barbies and notes on their body type, and how to change it. 
There's a rather large myriad of issues here. For one, the use of Barbies, a brand known for showing an even more unachievable female body image than Disney. Then there's the fact that they've been photoshopped to appear wrong, when they actually appear to just look like normal women (or as normal as a photoshopped Barbie can get). This seems to present the idea that none of these body types; apple, boyish, busty, pear or hourglass are acceptable and need to be changed. Fast, before any men look at you. It's almost like we need to have the body of a plastic doll to be allowed. The only one which seems to get away with existing is the hourglass, but even then the article suggests that you need to put more work in to stay "firm". I've still never worked out why 'firm' is desirable. It sounds like if you gave them a hug, they'd be hard as a board. (Get your mind out of the gutter, there's only room for one and I got here first.)
Oh Cosmo. You've been doing so well recently. Maybe not so much in this issue. I didn't take to the list of examples why females bosses are all bitches too well either, however excited you are for the Revenge Wears Prada film. 

I was wondering weather or not I should enter Cosmo's blog competition. Maybe not, after this. I don't think I'd win.

All I Want Is A Female Brian Cox

I love Brian Cox. I think he’s great. Properly, honestly great. He sort of vaguely wondered into our lives with the force of a Sherman tank, and then refused to leave. He sat down on the living room sofa of England and said “You need some science. Here, here is some science, delivered from the top of a gorgeous mountain which you too will want to stand on, but only after I’ve finished with it. And trust me; you’ll be able to, because after I’ve finished with it, this mountain won’t be able to walk for three weeks. Stand on my mountain, and love science.” And all of England immediately made him a cup of tea and cried “Of course we shall stand on this lovely mountain, you insanely beautiful man! What fools we have been, to believe in homeopathy and the apocalypse before we gazed upon your lovely face.” And then Brian Cox nodded, and wondered off to drink his tea, and play a bit of dodgy piano. 
I’m really glad we have Brian Cox. He’s bought science to the normal people, made physics cool, and worn an All Saints polo shirt while doing it. Really, very cool. 
But I’m greedy, and now I want a female version. As a raging feminist, I think women need a female Brian Cox. The closest thing we have is Mary Beard, lovely, quirky and interesting, but still not science, and still not shaggable. I don’t mean that in a way that want Scarlett Johnson running around in a lab coat, pointing at the sky and screaming “Wow! Gravity!”, but more in the way that I want a woman who you can fancy, and is still really, profoundly clever. 
Watching any program at the moment that has a bit of a science-y segment, and that has a female presenter, it is guaranteed that she will end up in a lab, looking a little bit lost, asking an actual scientist what the hell is going on, before turning to look doe-eyed into the camera, and announcing it’s time to go back to the studio. 
Nope. Defo not what’s needed. No seems to have yet managed to bridge the divide between ‘female scientist’, and ‘female presenter’. I want someone who a ten year old girl will look at and go “Wow! I bet loads of boys fancy her, and she knows the theory of relativity inside out. I wish I could be like her when I grow up.” I want a bird who throws on a McQueen sports bra to go inside an anti-gravity chamber – which she helped build. If she climbs up a mountain to observe the Northern Hemisphere in winter, I want her to snow board back down, without first having to get a bloke to strap her into her ski boots, and give her a push. 
Is that too much to ask? I like to think it isn’t. If a bloke can do it, why can’t we? Maybe, out there somewhere, there are thousands of women with PhDs and big hair, jostling to host their own physics show, on prime time BBC. Maybe the media think that no one would watch it, it would be a novelty for all of five seconds, before burning out like an asteroid entering the atmosphere. And of course it wouldn’t. Loads of people would watch it, and it would be wonderful. A wonderful new role model to sit our daughters down and say “You can be feminine, and love science, and you should, because you’ll be able to actually work out which face creams will work just by reading the ingredients.”  A lovely, big haired chick in walking boots and kaftan climbing up hills, and knowing stuff, and wanting to tell everyone about it, because science is just so incredibly wonderful that the only rational thing to do is to scream it from the top of a mountain. 
And if she just so happened to play keyboard in a series of truly alarming bands in the 80s, well, that would just be a bonus.