Ah, so that’s what that wince was all about…
Today’s comment (or yesterday’s really but I’m catching up) comes from a very frank thread at Feministe that spun out of a post about blogger ‘Ace’ and his pork product/female genitalia confusion into a wideranging conversation on which intimate physical matters women feel comfortable discussing in public. Read the whole thread, it ‘s very entertaining, and enlightening too if you’re a bit ignorant about women’s bits.
bbrugger Says:
April 30th, 2007 at 2:23 pmHeh. I don’t deliberately talk extra-loud in public spaces, but I tend to be pretty matter of fact and open. And these days, being 51 and in that happy state known as peri-menopause I have a whole new realm of things to share.
Hot flashes? Sounded like a fine idea back in my “I’m always cold” days. Now? Not so much. Hot flashes AND menstrual cramps? Totally not fair. I’d like a nice quiet word with the design team, please. And a two-by-four.
The wash your hands story above reminds me: Years ago I was at an event with camping and these palatial communal showers. One morning as about a dozen of us women were showering and dressing a young woman came in. She discovered that the basket of shower supplies she’d brought didn’t have any soap, someone offered her theirs and the conversation went on.
About the time the young woman was shyly informing us she’d met a nice young man and spent some quality time with him she poured a nice dollop of (excuse the all caps, this is a safety announcement) LIQUID PEPPERMINT SOAP into her hand and began to ‘clean house’.
Her eyes went very wide. She gave one of those long in-drawn gasps that you just know is going to result in ear-splitting shrieks. And she took about three steps straight up into the air. It was like something out of a RoadRunner cartoon.
It took four of us to wrestle her back under the shower flow to rinse it off.
We became quite good friends, and she took a great deal of delight in telling people how we’d met.
[…]
Evidently it put her completely off all things peppermint for some time afterwards. Starlight mints. Mint chocolate chip ice cream. Peppermint schapps. The scented candle set her mother gave her for the holidays. All of them gave her, as she put it, the female equivalent of the sympathetic cringe guys do when someone in a movie kicks a male character in the balls.
The noise that goes with that cringe is a slightly strangled ‘eeee’.
