THANKFUL FRIDAY

At the beginning of this week, I posted tales about the state of my body that many found relatable. Women friends have reached out, nodding heads in agreement and sharing their own personal experience. This was exactly my intention behind that entry. I am infuriated by the taboo of conversing above whispers in regards to our female bodies and well over the idea that I should feel shame about the normal things that happen to my female body. And because of the lack of interest from the medical industry, we (women) must come together and share, share, share in hopes of navigating our way through this highly uncertain phenomena of perimenopause/menopause.

Chad sent me a TikTok story about Rosalind Franklin and how Watson and Crick stole her research, which ended up winning them the Nobel Prize in 1962. This story is not new to me. All female scientists know this story. My first education on Watson and Crick though told a different story. They didn’t mention stealing any work or ideas from Franklin, but they made sure to talk about how disagreeable Franklin was to work with and, one would say, a bitch. The reality is that Rosalind Franklin was standing up for her research and herself. Watson and Crick would never have figured out the helical structure of DNA without Rosalind Franklin’s work. So instead of allowing a woman to get the credit for this discovery, they villainized her. They projected their fragile male egos and jealousy into writing a false narrative of a contentious woman.

Psst…this isn’t the first time in history fragile male egos and their jealousy has been projected to vilify a woman.

Some of you are probably wondering what the story of Rosalind Franklin has to do with woes of perimenopause. Trust me. This is all linked together. For far too long women have been pigeon holed into a projection of what men have wanted us to be and in doing so this has lessened us. Our bodies, our thoughts, our appearances are all gender constructed for the man. Deviations in said construct are not to be tolerated and should be ignored, thus putting our basic needs in the backseat and our contributions outside of childbearing, something to be stolen or unnoticed. I did not intend to set off to write yet another rant on the never ending reach of the patriarchy, but I can’t ignore that the lack of research and information around women’s health is directly linked to the patriarchy. Women have been relegated to barely even whispering words such as vagina or bleeding because men find those words unappealing or offensive, while there are whole industries built around glorifying the male ejaculation. A cock and balls is probably the most popular choice for graffiti artists and it is usually placed near the mouth of the model on the poster.

Where is the graffiti artist drawing vulvas in the mouths of poster models?

This is not a sermon for the choir kind of post. I wrote all of this on Wednesday and usually writing down my rage helps to dampen it. Instead, all I managed to do was pour gasoline all over my rage. I spent the day feeling prickly and stabby. But after another fitful night of sleep, I thought about what many of the women in my community had said about what they are going through. The most common phrase written in my comments is “I thought I was going crazy.” Of course we think this; we’re all tired and doctors wont listen to us. The number of comments I read that started with “my doctor didn’t believe me” or “three doctors later..” was ridiculous. Not only are we dealing with changes in our bodies that start with messing up the very foundation needed for basic living (which is sleep. sleep and rest are the most important things for our bodies), we are doing so while still, STILL, fighting to be the women we want to be and not the women men (or society) may want us to be. I want you to know that I am grateful for your voices and your continued hard work in this daily battle. We all deserve naps.

Let’s all go take naps!

WHAT IF THE PATRIARCHY DIDN'T EXIST

In 1963, three (male) anthropologists, unearthed the remains of a woman nearly 10,000 years old. They found that she had been buried with a projectile point that the men declared to be a '“scraping tool”. The male-centric consensus was that women were/are gathers while men are always the hunters. It took fifty five years and the discovery of a 9,000 year old woman buried with a hunting kit, for this narrative to change. Since then it has been concluded that hunting was/is a gender neutral activity.

This is a prime example of how men have been shaping the history of women and their roles in society for hundreds and thousands of years. I don’t even remember what started the conversation, but recently the Cabbage mentioned an old book of fiction written by some male author telling a woman’s story. I said that I “prefer to no longer read women’s stories written by male authors.” The Cabbage then replied “But what if they do it well?” My response was “Good for them, but men have been writing the story of women and thus defining the idea of what a woman should be for so long that I no longer have the energy to waste on yet another male perspective of a female story.”

This ended our conversation.

I was not completely enthralled with Barbieland. It sounds great. All woman government. A Supreme Court of only women. Women scientists. Women doctors. Women Nobel Prize winners. Every woman in Barbieland is extraordinary in some way. Extra. It is so extra that even Stereotypical Barbie questions her ‘enoughness’. This is where my thoughts get real complicated. In fact it sent me into a tailspin of research. Did you know that the original Barbie was inspired by a German doll that was based on a comic book character named Bilde Lilli, a voluptuous pin-up that was sold as a sexy trinket for World War II soldiers? Ruth Handler may have made some very slight changes, mostly in marketing and she probably did have good intentions in introducing a doll that she said was to be “aspirational”, but this “aspirational” doll’s narrative began as male driven story. Barbie was introduced as a fashion doll for dress-up play in 1961. It took several years for those dress-up clothes to resemble astronauts and doctors. Which left years of little girls aspiring to be pretty and the type of woman their daddies would like.

It is literally impossible to be a woman…

Gloria in Barbie, played by America Ferrera

This is the start of Gloria’s (played by America Ferrera) monolog on the expectations of women and all the contradictions in how we should conduct ourselves. Having to be a perfect Barbie in a perfect Barbie world is exhausting. How many times do we hear Margo Robbie’s character say “I’m just Stereotypical Barbie.”? Even this Barbie thinks she should be more. This group of male executives dreamed up a place where every woman is extraordinary. Barbieland is an expectation to be more not an aspiration for more. Expectations and aspirations do not have the same definitions. Barbieland is a product of the patriarchy. There has been criticism of Barbie’s easy forgiveness of Ken’s actions in this movie. I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone that Barbie had maybe two days of Ken’s bullshit introduction of the patriarchy. Ladies, we’ve had years of this bullshit.

This may sound like I did not like the movie. That’s not true. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I’m a huge fan of Greta Gerwig, the writer/director and I believe she found a fun and entertaining way to tell a story about women. Go see it. The music and dance scenes are spectacular. Just be prepared to have some thoughts.

Did you know that women have thoughts?

SIX

I think it was during the lock down when Talaura sent me a link to a soundtrack and told me to listen. It was the soundtrack for the musical Six and that soundtrack made its way into my daily listening playlist. It got played so often that the Cabbage discovered it in our shared Amazon music account and they started listening to it. So when Six was on the touring list for Kansas City this year, I bought tickets for the two of us. My first instinct is to tell you that this musical is like Spice Girls as the wives of Henry the Eighth, but that is a true simplification of the underlying fuck the patriarchy story that this musical tells.

It all starts out as a competition to decide which one of Henry’s wives had it the worst. Of the six, there were two divorces, two beheadings, one natural death and one survivor and history has not been kind when telling the stories for these six women. Because history is generally unkind when it comes to telling a woman’s story. I’ve heard a number of historical recounting in which at least three of Henry’s wives are described as manipulative and conniving. For sure, it was all of their own faults for whatever fate befell them. Even history lessons tell us that woman are asking for it, it’s the victim’s fault.

While The Cabbage and I sat waiting for the show to start, I overheard the two older ladies behind us discussing these women.

Isn’t one of them Anne Boleyn?

Yeah, well she angled for him for a while before he finally went for it.

What is not so funny about what I over heard is that it sounds very similar to an article I read with historian Hayley Nolan, author of Anne Boleyn: 500 Years of Lies. Anne Boleyn left court for at least a year to avoid Henry the Eight’s advances. Yet he still pursued her with written love letters.

The historians who do acknowledge this say it was a calculated tactic and sexual blackmail — the ultimate example of ‘when a girl says no, she really means yes. - Hayley Nolan

There’s a word we use now to describe his behavior. It’s HARASSMENT.

History has highlighted the so called faults of these six women. Temptress. Tease. Unable to produce a male heir. Didn’t look like their portrait. Conniving. Manipulative. Let me remind you. These women were Queens. Anne Boleyn was influential in passing the Poor Law which would require local officials to find work for the unemployed. Not to mention she birthed a daughter who would become one of the most powerful and longest reigning Queens in history. Catherine Parr, Henry’s last wife, was well educated and pushed forward education reform for women. Which one of them had it the worst and was asking for it?

The answer is none of them. None of those women truly wanted to marry Henry the Eighth. He treated his wives so badly that he made sure history would too. Henry the Eighth was the original Harvey Wienstein, except he was worse. Not only did he ruin reputations but he was a murderer of women. He’s the historical figure that should be forgotten. The patriarchy wants to pit us women against each other because it distracts us from the injustices they are doing to us.

You want to burn down the patriarchy? Stop falling for their bullshit distractions.