The Ouch Factor

Sometimes it's painful being a woman.

This morning, I took a long, hot shower and realised how sore my body was. Not from anything special. I haven't been wrestling any ogres lately. A dull ache tensed my shoulders and back. My breasts were tender to the touch. My own touch; if anyone else had of given them a fondle I would have ended their life. It was the throbbing pulse of pain in my vaginal region that made me confront how uncomfortable being a woman is.

I wonder what men would think if they experienced this sort of pain. Complete head to baby toe discomfort. Unrelenting, no matter how many Ibuprofens you pop back like sweeties. Women the world over go through these sorts of things every day. I'm not the first. I won't be the last. We don't curl up in bed and sleep the day away, either. We go to work. Raise our children. Volunteer. We play through the pain.

No one is none the wiser.

Then again, there are always the insensitive blokes who make comments about it being 'that time of the month'. I wonder if they understood what exactly 'that time of the month' entailed, whether they'd be so careless in tossing these statements about

Simply put, I don't know of very many men who can suffer gas, bloating, breast pain, cramping and back aches while wearing a pad or having a wad of cotton shoved up inside them. I'm not even going to get into the degrees of nasty when changing a tampon or sanitary napkin.

My final thought is, women are tough. Second sex, my arse.