The Love of Being a Woman

I have to take you back in time, so bear with me for a little bit. I was 16 yrs old when I had a sad day-I found out that I wasn't a boy, if you know what I mean.
Parents of the 60's were quite different. By that I mean, certain things were not up for discussion, such things as: menstruation, virgin, sex, and pregnancy, to name a few. I calll them the big 4. How odd that they are all related! I wonder if our parents even knew that then.
My first experience of womanhood, began in the 7th grade of school, at which time I am pretty sure that I still believed in Santa Claus. Apparently 99% of the so called girls were now women, but not me. These women wore bras and had something to put into the bra, but not me. I could see their boobs bounce and I wanted a pair. Boys were chasing after them all the time, but not me. What was with that?
One day, one such woman in my class named Ellen walked up front of the class to whisper something to the teacher. As she walked by my desk, it appeared that she had the misfortune of sitting on fudge popscicle that left chocolate stains on her skirt. She was mysteriously sent home that day. Wow, that was harsh punishment for sitting on chocolate!
As soon as I got home that day, I told my mother about Ellen and she got a very, strange look on her face. She sat me down and told me the most ridiculous explanation that could ever be and worse yet, I believed her.
She began like this, "Every woman has to go through this. This is the bodies way of getting rid of waste from a special place, once a month." So that was it, the stains weren't chocolate after all, end of discussion. I got one thing out of that conversation, that someday, soon, I would have something very nasty escaping from my body from somewhere, that was not poop. I could hardly wait.
Sure enough, the day came. I woke one morning feeling as if someone had kicked me in the lower part of my stomach. I crept to the bathroom to pee and the water was red. What was with the red pee? So I worried that I was going to bled to death and had no idea what was going on.
This prompted some serious mirror peering, and then I saw it, the special place, that I never knew existed was leaking blood.
Somehow, I got the nerve to tell my mother, after scrubbing 10 pairs of underwear that day. Then she gave me a special gift- a Kotex pad that was so big, it went from just below my navel in front and totally covered the crack of my butt in the back. Then she presented me with a little belt that had teeth to grasp the huge pad so it wouldn't escape from my drawers and go flying off into the sunset. These same pads were used for maternity pads as well-one size fits all. How sad for me that I was a skinny girl and the pad was as thick as I was and I am sure that everyone knew I was wearing one. Keep in mind that Tampons were a big secret especially for girls like me who nothing about the big 4.
Did I forget to mention the rubber pants? These were just like the ones used on infants back in the cloth diaper days, only much larger. These rubber pants had cloth on the inside and plastic on the outside, so that if you sat on chocolate, you were safe!!!
Then the day came when I played sports and discovered that blood and sweat are not a good mix, giving off a strange aroma. My friend Sharon was well experienced in the new fad of Tampon use and filled me in on how to use one.
It sounded easy, but let me tell you about the first Tampon in history. It was a large, cardboard white rat with a tail. And believe me, it did not glide in, as a matter of fact, it refused to go in that special place.
For 4 hrs, I sat in the bathroom trying to achieve the impossible. Finally, I got the rat-thing partially inserted, so that it was still mostly hanging out. Talking about a bad feeling! How could a woman endure such misery. I walked out of the bathroom looking like I had been riding a horse for a week. I was so miserable I walked back in the bathroom to take it out, but it was stuck fast. I think this is when I got traumatized.
Many years later, the cardboard rat was replaced by some pretty, pink, plastic, easy-glide corks. Even though there was a warning about the possiblity of a deadly toxic shock, the business of the plastic rat boomed. Some women would rather die that be humiliated.
Let me tell you of my first woman shopping trip with my mother. First we shopped for a bra, which I didn't need, but I got a 28AA. The first time that I wore it to school, it almost cut off my breath and kept creeping up my neck instead of supporting my two pancakes with raisins in the middle. The shoulder straps rubbed blisters on my skin.
We also shopped for hose that day, not panty hose. These were thigh high nylons that required a garter belt, which was a wide elastic belt that fit around my hips with 4 long garter things that had the capacity of latching onto your hose, front and back. I do believe that garter belts are still around, since I saw a model in the Victoria Secret shore wearing a bright red one. She looked like a woman of ill-repute, if you know what I mean? (not that I ever shop there)
So I was a woman. How come the boys weren't chasing after me? Maybe it was because I looked like a boy wearing a teeny little bra that served no purpose at all, who had a triple layer cottonball stuffed between my legs, and wearing all kinds of miserable stuff, all in the name of being a "woman".
I soon concluded that being a woman was not all it was cracked up to be. I threw my bra away and asked for some knee high socks. Maybe Santa would bring me a pair.
I recall, crying to my dad on several occasions about me not having any boobs. He told me, " You will get them when you are 18." It didn't happen. Then he told me that I would "get them when you got pregnant." It didn't happen. Then he told me that I "would get them when you nurse your babies." When I found out that postpartum breasts and nipples resembled two huge pacemakers that soon became 2 bulging, painful rocks, I knew that nursing was not for me. There was no way in Sam Hill that a baby who had the sucking compacity of a huge toilet plunger, was going to try to get milk out of them. That is why formula was invented.
I have to admit that my breasts did get larger just after the birth of my boys , from a AA to a BB, and they stayed that way for a whole week. Then they shrank and I think they got smaller than before.
The last encouraging words came from my mother, "you will get breasts when you go through menopause,"- like who could believe her. Well its been 15 years now and I do a daily check. It ain't happened yet.
It makes you kind of wonder if parents just tell you what they think you need to hear, doesn't it? I don't think they intend to lie, they just don't know the truth.
Be looking for next article on birthing babies. Have a nice day!!