Pain Only A Woman Understands

Women put up with a lot.

And most of it we do to ourselves.

And we do it to look better.

Now, I'm not going to get up on my feminist soap box and rant and rave about how society forces women to injure themselves in order to confirm to an unrealistic, objectified and sexualised ideal.

Because I don't buy it, even for one second.

And, frankly, I find the implication insulting.

But my views on the ironically hegemonic teachings of sociology aside, we can all agree that women go to some extreme lengths to be seen as attractive.

And sometimes I think we need reminding of just how ridiculous some of these beauty rituals are.


1. Eyebrow Plucking

I have messed up eyebrows.

Normal eyebrows are supposed to look like this:



My eyebrow looks like this:




Which means, like what I assume is the majority of women, I end up having to pluck my forest of eyebrow hair into a semi-manageable garden of eyebrow hair.

Which I wouldn't mind if it didn't hurt like a bitch.

And since my skin is overly sensitive, plucking my eyebrows makes the entire area above my eye turn red.



Also, for an unknown reason, it makes me sneeze.






2. Shaving

I hate being hairy.
I also hate shaving.
Thankfully for Joshua, I hate being hairy just a tiny bit more than I hate shaving, otherwise I probably would have given it up years ago.

It's not the time consuming nature of shaving, or the inconvenience of it, that I hate.
Oh no.
It's that exact moment when you nic yourself with a razor.





Five seconds later...



3. Waxing

The only thing worse than shaving, is waxing.
Now, I've only ever done this twice.

The first time, I couldn't get the wax to lift from my skin. Which left me a giant sticky, and still hairy, blob.



The second time, I bought a better waxing kit, and tried again.






Nothing could be more painful than that experience.

But I was determined to finish the job.

This is exactly why they make Tylenol and beer. And why they should package both of those together with waxing kits.




When I was sufficiently numbed to pain, I tried again.




In the end, I ended up as a sticky blob again. Only this time I was red, hairy, and drunk.



4. Bending

Yoga is great for exercise and relaxation.
For people that can bend, at least.

I don't fit into that category.
You see, I can't even touch my toes.



But I insist on doing yoga.

So, About Your Computer...

This last Wednesday seemed like any other day as I finished at work, and drove myself home.



But little did I know tragedy was about to strike.

I had received a text from my father letting me know that he and my step-mother would be out at a celebratory dinner to commemorate his new job.

As always, I was invited to join them, but it was two full freeway exits away which was a total of less than five entire minutes and I just couldn't be bothered.



So it happened that I arrived home to find the house empty and dark.



Which was when I heard it



There was a loud knocking coming from our study.
And it sounded almost... electronic.



Fearing a robotic attack, I summoned all my courage and attacked while I still had the element of surprise.

(No, it never occurred to me that as I make all the noise of a galumphing elephant when I come through the door that the robot overlords/possible robbers may have already heard me).

With out even the least trepidation I flung myself into the study.



Only to find that it was empty.

And the noise wasn't coming from robbers, or murderers, or even robots bent on human annihilation.

No, the noise was coming from our family computer.

And it sounded like the computer was full of gnomes banging on metal with small, gnomish hammers at random intervals.



So I spent the rest of the evening normally, trying to ignore the noise.




After a few hours, my father and step mom came home, and I alerted them to the fact that the family computer was either possessed or filled with tiny gnomes who may, or may not, be possessed.

We were going to need an exorcist either way, I assured my father, and told him that there was probably an entire section in the yellow pages that dealt with this sort of thing.

Long story short, father assured me that it was not gnomes, and nothing was possessed.
But the hard-drive was, apparently, totaled.

Which meant, until the magical computer people at the computer store were able to fix it, the family computer would not be functional.

I was inconsolable.



You see, though I have my own computer and laptop, the family computer is the one with a working scanner and printer.

Which is how I get all those lovely pictures I draw onto the computer for these posts.

So, without a scanner, my blog was stagnant.



All three of my readers were going to be devastated.

There had to be another way...

First I tried Paint:



Then the app 'DoodleBuddy'




Finally, I remembered that my iPhone could take photos.
Pretty good quality photos, actually.
That is, as long as you bother to use adequate lighting.

Which I did not.

So, my drawings looked like this:



With some highlighting and extreme contrasting, I managed to produce THIS POST.

As well as the one you're reading right now.




Take that, computer gnomes.