For the past fifty plus years I’ve been a girl person,
during a dizzying period of technological advances that have allowed mankind
(oops, I mean human beings without apparent gender) to fly to the moon, dive
the Mariana trench, and humiliate me in every conceivable way.
Cathy Rigby, the first US gymnast to win a medal in
the Olympics, introduced me, and a whole host of teenage girls to the wonders
of modern feminine hygiene products. Cathy made Stayfree Maxi pads cool, and
she made you think the you could be upside down on a four inch balance beam and
not have a girl care in the world. I must have gotten stuck trying out the
maxi-pad prototypes, because I never could do a handstand on a balance
beam, ever, but that’s Madison Avenue for you. You can find out more about
Cathy Rigby, the Maxi pad-wearing gymnast, at the Museum of Menstruation.
Later, after my first mammogram, a technological
marvel that can look inside your boobs—if your boobs are really, really flat, I
was told that I would need a needle nosed biopsy and that the incision would be
no larger than a grain of rice.
“Brown or instant?” That’s what I should have asked.
With the image of a grain of rice emblazoned on my
mind, I walked into the biopsy room, wearing a paper washcloth, noticed that there
was a great big hole in the surgical table, and had a hideous vision of my
future.
Horrified, I turned to the strange man about to dig
around in my mammary gland and asked, “Is that hole in the middle of that table
for what I think it’s for?”
“Yep.” And it was.
Once I flopped my slightly used, less than perky
bosom into the mammary gland hole in the middle of the table the words “Boob
Loogie” came to mind.
When the highly touted anesthesia refused to deaden
my dangling breast, and I complained loudly, the strange man digging around in
my boob with a needle, said, “Well, some breasts are more dense than others.”
“Dude, the end of my boob just hit your shoelace, how
dense can it be?”
Don’t even get me started on four C-sections in six
years. For my first baby they shaved me “nipples to knees.” No, seriously that
was the official medical expression. By the fourth baby, I was watching the
entire surgery in a giant mirror, angled for my viewing pleasure.
Recently, my daughters were describing the latest in
advancements in the way of the latest in gynecological examination chairs.
Apparently, there is a new “exam” chair that mimics the
space shuttle in the act of taking off. A girl patient climbs in and with a
flick of a switch, stirrups are deployed, the part under your bum disappears,
and the chair reclines—until your head is poking down and your girl parts are
poking up. When my oldest daughter demonstrated I felt faint and had to put my
head between my knees.
“I cannot do it,” I murmured from between my knees,
“I simply cannot risk “The Chair.” I will be making my next appointment with a
certified witch doctor of the noble savage variety. As Scarlett O’hara is my
witness, I swear it.”
I love being a girl. I love the shoes, the
clothes, the makeup, and the mystique of it all, but honestly, is it just me or
is the modern world out of its technological mind?
Linda (Girls Just Want to Have Fun) Zern
PS Have
everything checked constantly so you can keep wearing those darling girl
shoes.
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