Round Two. Fight!




After declaring it officially 1-0 to us ladies in my last blog I was forced to consider one or two small incidents that might just sway my 'Men V's Women' argument a little.




I hate admitting I'm wrong, (it's very rare, because I'm normally always right of course,) so I'm not wrong, but just this once, just on this occasion, I am going to sort of, half admit that I might have been a little . . . unfair.




Not many men read my blog, maybe just 2% of all readers are male, (my Daddy and my Husband make up this entire percentage i reckon.) And whilst I do not like to be wrong, or lose at things or admit defeat in a battle such as this, I do believe in justice and have kinda concluded that this fight probably isn't all that fair with only one party present. Thus I have decided to review the matter accordingly . . .




When Jay read my last blog he laughed a little, rolled his eyes to heaven and then said, 'God you are such a suffragette.' - and then had to explain to me exactly what a suffragette was because I'm ashamed to say I didn't know, and he then proceeded to gently remind me of the events of that day for the both of us.




So firstly let me take you on a little journey through my life on the day that I wrote the last blog.




I awoke. Did very little. Pottered about a bit. Looked at the washing. Decided to do it later. Half-heartedly wiped the kitchen sides down in a bid to clean up and then answered the door to the ASDA delivery boy. Mum had very kindly offered to order us 'a few bits,' (because I'd accidentally spent most of our money by persuading a very tipsy and therefore vulnerable Jay to buys lots of drinks in London on Tuesday night, and then persuaded a very hungover and therefore vulnerable Jay to buy us a huge Maccy D's the day after. And the two of us kinda prioritised booze and junk food over shopping. Whoops. Told you I was crap with money.)




As I began to unpack my goodies I noticed something rather peculiar. The shopping, much like Noah's animals, was coming in two-by-two. Hurrah! Baffled and strangely excited by the wonders of such a cock-up I continued to unpack. 2 sacks of potatoes. 4 packets of nappies. 2 enormous bags of dog biscuits. 12 pints of milk. 4 loaves of bread. 96 Weetabix. 'Why on earth would Mum buy us 96 bloody Weetabix?' I thought, 'What does she think I am?! Some kind of wheat junkie?!'




I scrambled about for the receipt to ensure the cock-up had been the fault of Mr. ASDA and not my Mumma's and sure enough the extra items had not been charged for. (So I ought to take this opportunity to thank both my Mum and Mr. ASDA for my now being the in possession of 48 loo rolls, amongst other things. Thank you kindly, I shall recreate the feeding of the five thousand at my gaff pronto!)




Now the trouble with us women is that we can become irrational about the strangest of things and my mammoth grocery supply was enough to leave me irrationally thrilled to bits. And so thrilled was I that I forgot to shut my top kitchen cupboards and i enthusiastically leapt around the kitchen finding new homes for all my stuff when I accidentally ran straight into the corner of one of the cupboards and smacked my head with such almighty force that I fell backwards and landed in a dazed and confused heap on the kitchen floor next to the bin.




My god did it hurt. If I'd been animated little birds and stars and stuff would have been circling my head and a bump the size of a banana would have formed. Instead I was sick on my trousers and my head was bleeding a little :-( It hurt too much to cry, or swear. Instead I settled for staying put and reaching for the phone to call my man. (That's the other thing about us girlies. It doesn't matter how tough we are, when we're hurt or when we're really sad there's nothing quite as soothing as a nice masculine shoulder to cry on.)




In contrast, please allow me to take you on the journey that my husband had had that very same day.




Jay had been on his way to work that morning, (probably singing along to West Life songs I imagine, such is his peculiar taste in music,) when he noticed a nasty accident up ahead. A car lay almost upside down in a ditch at the side of the road, the engine hissing furiously. Lot's of people we're nearby. Some redirecting the traffic, others gawping in horror, some just lapping up the drama of the scenario, but nobody had checked on the passengers inside the upside-down car, until Captain Jay arrived in his cape. (Just to clarify, he wasn't really wearing a cape, he may listen to West Life but he's not completely camp!) Jay pulled up and ran to the car where he prised the door open and managed to single-handedly rescue a terrified woman and her shaking baby from the vehicle.




In my head he emerged through a cloud of smoke, his shirt torn, his muscles bulging, cradling the angelic baby in his arms. The crowds erupts into grateful and amazed applause and cheers before the car explodes into a giant ball of flames.




Alas since this is Britain, (and we're all so reserved,) and cars don't really explode the way they do in the movies, I don't think it happened quite like that. And being the modern-day hero he is Jay simply put his cape in the boot and continued his journey to work.




Later that afternoon he received a telephone call from another damsel in distress. Only this muppet was less Hollywood starlet, more Womble laying in a heap on the kitchen floor. Still Captain Jay returned from his heroics, rescued said Womble, cooked a scrummy tea of sausages, mash and peas and nursed the womble and her sore head with lots of love, kisses and chocolate.




Whoever it is sitting up there in the rulers chair, (most probably male) must have read my blog and decided to teach me a lesson, and so though it pains me to say it, i think the score is probably by now pretty much even.

In my 25 years on this planet i have endured 2 whole years of pregnancy in total, three labours, approximately 84 experiences of the dreaded 'curse', 2/3 years of puberty, regular bouts of PMT and hormonal outbursts and have had the whole world see more of my body than I care to imagine. Yet still if push came to shove, (quite literally) I'd choose being female over being male any day of the year, (except perhaps for 5-7 days once a month, but let's not get too specific.)




Of course if Mother Nature employed me as her apprentice I might suggest one or two changes for the female breed . . . maybe abolish one, if not all, of the aforementioned women's issues? At the very least I'd add a few extra perks to being female, (like removing the calories and fat from chocolate perhaps?) but overall I think Mother Nature has already done a pretty amazing job.




Now I'm not going to turn all diva-ish here by chanting, 'Girl Power,' and pouting at every opportunity, and I don't want to alienate the opposite sex by slating them - I'm no man-hater at all, far from it, (I have always listed 'boys' as one of my hobbies,) yet despite my love for and general interest in boys, (which started at a very tender age for me,) it has to be said that in the age-old battle of the sexes, I'm on team 'G' all the way.




Women, are, quite frankly, creatures of utter amazement to me. Not only are we better looking, (in most cases) than our male counterparts, and much, much more mature, we can also handle many a task with greater speed and efficiency than the boys. And we can grow babies. And you can't get better than that. So there.




I do have a great fondness for boys, and i can admire a decent man for more than just the sweetness of eye candy that he may produce, but i think i'll always have more admiration and be more impressed by the powers of a woman.




'Girl Power,' and all that it entails, has long been a statement that I secretly quite like. Not because I'm a huge fan of the platform wearing, badly dressed, irritatingly catchy Spice Girls, (though i cannot deny to being a bit of a closet fan,) but because I truly believe in it. I truly believe that girl power should never be under estimated.




Despite the Spice Girls injecting us with a severe dose of Girl Power back in the day, I don't really believe they can claim to be the inventors of it. Nor do i believe Maggie Thatcher was the one that bore the idea of Girl Power. It started way before all that . . .




Some might say the concept of Girl Power began back in the day by the hippy chick from the 60's, the one with the gravity-defying tits, (which she must have possessed, why else would she insist we all burn our bra's?!) - but I don't believe that either.




In fact, my friends, I can tell you exactly when and where Girl Power was born. I sussed it ages and ages ago. It all started with a girl named Eve, whom successfully seduced a boy named Adam and had her name in the bible for doing so.




And ever since that day those fortunate enough to have been born without the (I imagine rather uncomfortable,) funny bits between the legs, (and they are funny, don't you agree?) have been able to celebrate. So long as they have had the ability to recognised the gift of Girl Power bestowed upon them in the first place.




Plenty of us girlies out there don't realise how lucky we are. We cannot seem to see the extent of the powers we have at our manicured finger-tips. Too many men have tried to make us appear the weaker sex and too many policies have tried to suppress our powers. But let's face it ladies, without us the boys would be screwed, (and not in the way in which they'd like perhaps.)




If you've ever witnessed a woman give birth I'm sure you'd agree, (in fact you only need witness any female species give birth to be amazed. Take our Tinkerbell, for example, she gave life to, not one, but ten gorgeous little kitties all by herself, which is more than the tom-cat who got her up the duff in the first place can say. He didn't even show up to check on his babies, let alone offer to pay any form of kitty support or maintenance.) - It is an amazing feat for any girl to survive, and it so deserves recognition. (Preferably in the form of Shoes and Handbags please folks!)




But I'm not saying that only us Mummies deserve to be celebrated, because wonders of pregnancy and child-birth aside, we girlies do have a lot on our plates, and it certainly isn't easy being a girl.




Sure we have cheaper car insurance, the right to be irrational from time to time, the ability to transform ourselves with Make-Up and beauty products, the wonders of the Wonderbra and the ability to manipulate almost any situation with a simple flutter of the eyelashes and a cheeky smile. Yet there are negatives too that can never be ignored.




There is very little dignity in being female. Just the other day when making an appointment with the nurse in my local surgery I was practically forced by the bitch on the desk to explain the nature of the appointment. Try as I might i couldn't help but blush when I found myself half-whispering the word, 'Contraception,' and thus raising many an eyebrow amongst those sitting close by in the waiting room. Guys don't have to deal with that sort of embarrassment.




Then there's the day when Aunt Flow comes a'calling for the first time in a young girls life, marking the day when she officially begins to transcend from being a little care-free girl with pigtails and an obsession with bikes, to being a woman, with PMT and horrible cramps. It isn't pretty, it isn't fun and yet we have very little say on the matter at all.




Physical changes in a woman's life are one thing, but the mental aspects can be even worse. It might be a nightmare spending time with an unreasonable psycho bitch from hell, but you wanna try being in the mind of one. It's like undergoing a personality transplant with your eyes wide open and there's nothing you can do about it.




We all know the signs, we begin to get agitated by the slightest thing. Something someone says, something someone doesn't say. You could be on your own in paradise and you'd still find something that pisses you off. Irritability begins to bubble until eventually you boil over, erupting like a volcano and spreading red-hot lather upon anyone, or any thing, that might just happen to be within throwing distance. We know we are being unreasonable. We know our actions are out of order, and yet we just cannot contain it. And all the while we have to deal with such hilarious jokes such as, 'That time of the month darlin??' or, 'Cheer up love, might never happen!!' Woe betide a man who makes such comments in my direction, I'd make 'em wish they were never born.




But you know what else? We don't even support one another these days. The secret society of sisterhood is certainly not always readily available, (unless it is so secret that I rarely discover it?!) and instead of uniting in all that is feminine we have an unattractive tendency to bitch about one another. We're all too quick to judge each other as women. On our choices in men, the choices we make as mothers, the decisions we choose surrounding our careers. We point fingers, as though it's gonna make us feel better about the people we are, but it doesn't, instead it just makes us cynical and lonely.




I think if Mother Nature did employ me I'd change all that, but in the meantime I can only control myself and ensure that I don't judge or bitch. Instead I will officially declare myself a 'girls' girl.' and I'd like to urge you to join me.




So here's what we're gonna do. We're going to remain in our bra's (afterall we all look better in them, let's leave the burning to the boys,) we're going to smile at each other, support one another and put the competitions aside. We're gonna strutt with pride, sway our child-bearing hips and shake our booties at the boys and then we're going to remember that no matter what choices we make, what routes we choose to take (oh god this is all rhyming and is beginning to sound like one of those,'new age poems') – with the right pair of heels on and our pals beside us, we really can conquer the world.




By Steph, (whom does not possess a willy but is proud nevertheless.)




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