It would be a lie if I were to tell you that I see women's lives as the sleeve of a Brownie uniform upon which triangular badges of womanhood are hard earned and painstakingly applied. I've never before thought of it as any such thing, and were it not for this post I am sure I would never have had the need for such a metaphor. But as it is I do, so let us pretend for a while.

In The Past, badge choice was limited. There was the Marriage badge and the Childbirth badge but women's lives so infrequently deviated from this path that no others were needed. Those badges are still available to collect today and remain curiously popular, but now that we ladies are sexually liberated, economically emancipated and all those other things that render certain men so frightened they don superhero costumes and climb public buildings, manufacturers have realised that new badges are needed to mark suitable milestones of womanhood though as before, they're not very often decided upon by women themselves. I collect these badges in the same way I collect pro abstinence jewellery and Operation Enduring Freedom trading cards, because they make me feel superior and they're always amusing Christmas presents, but I don't actually wear them. A good percentage of women do, of course, and there's some so frightened that they feel they must have a full set lest someone question their femininity, but it's rare that I actually earn one for myself.

I did last week, however. I got one of my very own, for paying a not inconsiderable sum of money for someone to rip out all the hair from my euphamistically named 'bikini area'. Not being the kind of female used to plucking, tinting, buffing and styling, I found it a somewhat more amusing experience than I suspect is normal.

(At this point in the narrative a slight woman with uncontrollable hair, green brogues and a t-shirt with the words FEMINIST CREDENTIALS emblazoned across her considerable bosom comes up taps me on the shoulder, muttering darkly about pornography and the male gaze. She says she recognises that I used the words liberated and emancipated earlier in an entirely ironic fashion, and really her sides are splitting with mirth, but when was I going to denounce this fashion for grown women looking like pornstar/Barbie/child hybrids like a good stroppy bitch, and simultaneously explain away my own actions in an entirely understandable and blameless way? I pause, and think. After a minute I tell her if she'd like me to be the kind of person insecure enough that I'd feel the need to justify myself to strangers then fine, but could she pop the kettle on because I could be here a while? When I look round again, she's gone.)

I considered telling the Australian woman wielding the waxy spatula that fhe paper thong I was wearing was unnecessary, and that of all the people I've had peering right where she was now she was by far one of the least embarrassing. But much like the intoxicating oxygen masks on plummeting aeroplanes the thickly warm room, gently wafting sounds of a radio somewhere tuned to Heart FM and the suspicion that the pants were for the sake of her delicacy rather than mine kept me quiet and docile. I couldn't stop the automatic fetal rolling once it started, however.

Gnnng!
I can see you're a bit tense there, she said.
Gnnng!
Ah well, you're allowed to be tense when someone's ripping hair out of your fanny.

I loved her, just a little bit, for that. And then, it was over.

As to the new setup; well, I'm unsure. I don't know that I'll go back, but it's been enlightening in more ways than one. I had always wondered why the Vadge badge was so hard to come by on Ebay: now I know.

Comments