It's a fun little game, trying to see what decade you would rather live in than this one. The 60s is a pretty popular answer. Sometimes the 20s. The 80s. A conservative or two misses the 50s. Some douchebag without a firm grasp of history gets teary-eyed about the 40s. Sometimes people venture even further back in time. 1800s, Enlightenment, Renaissance, etc.
If karma's a bitch, nostalgia's a whore. Nostalgia, you ignorant slut.
Me, I'm good here in 2012. I like my phone and my computer and the internet. I know we're going through some tough times, but I also know we'll move past it. Well, I don't KNOW that, but I believe that.
And as much as love learning about our past, I'm not particularly interested in living it. The 60s was a time of political unrest and upheaval that makes these days seem pretty damn tame. The 20s was an entire decade where alcohol was illegal, so definitely no thanks. The 80s sucked for being gay, but at least they understood good hair. People in the 50s knew how to dress, sure, but the fact that that decade directly resulted in the 60s tells you all you need to know about how much I'm not at ALL interested, thank you.
Women's rights is an issue if you go too far back. My mother couldn't apply to the Ivy League schools because they were still all-male, for example. But at least then, as a woman, you knew that a bad date was still going to pick up the check. This is no longer a universal truth.
But that's not even the biggest issue for me. Here is a tale explaining in full why I am perfectly fine with living in the present.
In 2004 I was 14 years old. One day I visited my grandparents in Leisure Village, a retirement community up in Camarillo. We were having a grand old time, playing bocce and ping pong, maybe swimming. At one point I had to use the restroom and found my underwear covered in blood. Ugh, menstruation.
By this time I'd been getting my period every 4 weeks for about a year, but it still surprised the crap (well, blood I guess) out of me every time. I'd look down and get confused, like it'd only been three and a half weeks since my last one ended so why was it back again already? I was never expecting it. But going to an all-girls school and being on a girls' soccer team usually meant I was around others who were prepared, so I was used to getting lucky.
Not so on this fateful day in Leisure Village.
Grandma, you see, had not received a visit from Aunt Flo in a few decades now. Her friends were on her same page. In fact, it's safe to say the ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD was on the same page. I was totally screwed.
I told my grandma, and together we walked to the Senior Center, hoping they might have something for us. The lady was very nice, saying she didn't have anything but the public restroom down the hall might.
See, it's just not a thing I think about. You have tampons with applicators (my mom kept threatening me with tampons without applicators but like that is totally disgusting mom stop it). You have pads - thin pads, thank you. You have birth control that sometimes lets you skip that step altogether. These are the products I am used to. This is the beautiful life I have come to take for granted.
So in 2004, when 14-year-old me ominously stepped into that public restroom on the off-chance it would have something to stop the bleeding, I was... not prepared. For the box that was easily one cubic yard big that held a single pad meant to fit inside my underwear.
With the exciting new tagline: "Pad: Now Without Garter Belt!"
Now Without Garter Belt.
NOW WITHOUT GARTER BELT. This was a thing to brag about. Now without garter belt. Now without... now without garter belt.
Well, we have two options, don't we? I mean, the pad's going in, that's not an option. The options I'm talking about are as follows: either women's hygiene has come a long way in a VERY short time, or this pad was older than I care to think about.
I cried that day*, for the decades passed in which women lived these disgusting, bloody lives. For the ladies that came before me, who didn't have access to shoving cotton with a string up their vaginas and instead had to wear it inside their underwear, without adhesive, tied around their waist so it wouldn't fall out. I heard tales of cloth you would simply throw out afterwards. Horrific. HORRIFIC. Mother. Grandmothers. Aunts. Great-Aunts. You have been through so much that I may never, ever know.
So today I salute all the women who came before me. You are an inspiration. And I am glad as all hell that I live in the now, and not in the past. Because honestly, nothing sounds worse than a tampon-free period.
*Not true. This is hyperbole.
No comments:
Post a Comment