All About Eve: Being a Woman is Hard

Sadly, this post will not feature any performances by Bette Davis or Thelma Ritter. My deepest apologies if I got your hopes up. : ) This is a much more…female post.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for about five months now. Actually, I’ve been wanting to write this post one day a month for about five months now. Then that day passes and I decide to wait another month. But not this month! This month I’m going to give Eve a piece of my mind.

Here's the deal. There are definitely advantages to being a woman. We have much cuter accessories, we get to wear makeup to cover up zits, and we have the option to veto stupid movie choices. But we have some pretty serious cons, too. (I’m not going to get into the theological aspects of whether or not Eve is to blame for the sin of mankind; she is simply going to be my ‘womanhood sucks’ scapegoat.)

First off, I understand the appeal of the idea of knowing everything. Knowledge of good and evil and whatnot. There is definitely an argument to be made for that. But seriously lady, if you’d just been a leeeetle bit patient Google would have shown up in a couple of thousand years. You can find the answer to pretty much anything on there. Ah, blessed Google.

Next in my list of major issues with Eve is the whole ‘time of the month’ issue. I’m sure there are women out there who don’t mind their seven days of misery, and those women should probably have their medication adjusted. For my part, I do not love the sudden loss of freedom that comes with making sure you have all the goods you need to make it through the day, the sudden punch in the gut of cramps, and that moment of panic when you realize it’s coming and you’re in public with no supplies. I’d like to imagine that our cycle signals would feel more like being tickled by fairies if she hadn’t eaten that dang apple. Or fig. Or whatever the heck it was. It was probably a Red Delicious. Those things always look way better than they taste.

This leads me to the main event. The complete culmination of cringing, cramping, and crying. (Check out that amazing alliteration!) That beautiful experience in which you scream, curse your unborn child, try to break your husband’s fingers, and worry about pooping on the doctor. Let me just say this: if Eve had had any inkling of what was in store for her to have all those little humans, she would have kept her distance from that tree. Or from Adam. And she would have reconsidered all those kids. Especially Cain. That dude was nothing but trouble from the beginning. I think the stork delivery would have been a totally viable option if not for that blasted tree.

This is right before they started me on the drugs to induce labor with Miss Eden. Don't I look radiant? (You can also replace 'radiant' with 'bloated, uncomfortable, and downright pissed off.')

The fact remains that women do have quite a few interesting experiences. However, if we didn’t have to get through all those things, we wouldn’t get to experience the awe of a positive pregnancy test, the tickly flutter of first kicks, the giddy elation of holding that little munster for the first time, and the privilege of kissing tears away to make everything better. I wouldn’t trade any of it. So I guess if I saw Eve, I’d give her an awkward side hug and tell her to stop beating herself up. We get it. And the pros outweigh the cons. By a landslide.

This picture reminds me of the saying "Many hands make light work." I love that it's so obvious that our family wouldn't be nearly as lovely without all of those little hands.