Still Misfitting

This week we celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest inventions to emancipate women: oral contraceptives. While automatic washing machines and dishwashers were terrific inventions, the pill beats technological timesavers hands down.

My mother was a practicing Catholic at the time of the pill’s introduction and never partook of its advantages, however risky at the time – the early versions of the pill were much stronger than necessary and were blamed for some health problems in later years. She subsequently gave birth to four more children. Eventually, she figured out some way of stifling her fertility, but not until after her eighth child. Would high levels of synthetic hormones be more dangerous than raising eight kids? I submit not. I also suspect I would have suffered a similar fate were it not for the incredibly reliable Demulen 35 available to me 20 years later.

My own history with contraceptives is a story of both success and failure of astronomical odds-defying. Nevertheless, without the pill, I’d be living in a shoe.

I first went on the pill in the early 80s, after two pregnancies in two years. My second pregnancy was the result of a failed barrier method; my first the result of a quotidian error called “drunk sex”. I remember the pill was expensive back then, about $20 a pack, but I was able to get a discount based on a sliding scale at the clinic in Columbus that catered to college students. Being on the pill required an annual health exam, which was fine with me and well worth it.

I changed brands and levels of estradiol three times in the course of seventeen years. I briefly went off the pill when I turned 35 because I was still a smoker, and switched to the Seinfeld-made-famous “Sponge,” which has since been taken off the market. I can see why. It failed me, and probably millions of others. Unplanned Baby #3 was born fifteen years after Unplanned Baby #2. Back to the pill I ran!

In my late 30s, my then health care professional recommended I switch from Demulen 1/35 to Loestrin 1/20, reducing the estradiol to 20 mcg. She said it would help with peri-menopausal symptoms as well, although I had none at the time. Statistically, women over 35 are less fertile than their younger counterparts, and this level of estradiol is (usually) effective. Ha ha ha! my ovaries laughed at that wimpy level, and I got pregnant within two weeks of actually “testing” its efficacy. And no, I didn’t forget to take it on schedule. I actually felt horribly guilty and shocked, because I had several friends who were desperately trying to get pregnant: taking their temperature every day, standing on their heads, eating food that would allegedly boost their fertility, yet rolling craps. Me? My uterus should be in the Smithsonian.

Needless to say, after that little surprise, I decided that more radical measures were required. Even the pill had let me down. I could no more rely on any manmade chemical contraceptives, or subject myself to implants, injections, patches, rings, and IUDs than I could expect my outrageous fertility to suddenly diminish. Considering my track record, I feared I’d be one of the 1% of women who still get pregnant after sterilization. (Happily, no.) I vividly recall the doctor who was about to perform the surgery the day after I delivered Unplanned Baby #4 asking me if I was “absolutely sure” I wanted him to proceed. I looked up at him and laughed, “Doc! I have two kids in college and a newborn! Please! I beg you! Shut this down!”

Parenting can often be a wretched, vexing, thankless job.

From the moment of conception until the day we are laid out in final impiety – surrounded by vapid, curdled chrysanthemums and hideous white hydrangeas, in the only unflattering navy blue outfit in our closet, our lifeless lips smeared with clashing flamingo pink (a color we swore to never be caught dead in), to the strains of mangled Andrew Lloyd Webber on an out of tune organ – we subject ourselves to endless humiliation, deprivation, exploitation, financial sacrifices, and drudgery.

During pregnancy we watch with horror our lovely, smooth, firm bodies balloon to freakish proportions, leaving an atlas of stretch marks from Madagascar to Terra del Fuego. We suffer nausea, heartburn, constipation, indescribable labor pains, staggering losses of modesty and blood, while complete strangers probe, sterilize, slice and suture our most sacred anatomy. The cherubic bundles of joy quickly transform into insatiable, selfish demons demanding every ounce of our energy and resources, outgrowing unworn clothing and unused toys faster than we can replace our tattered cotton underwear. Our intermittent sleep or languid lovemaking is interrupted by little bodies crawling into bed with us, melancholic moans of fever, fears of monsters under the bed, vomiting, ear infections, rashes, or other mysterious maladies. We spend the next eighteen years in a constant state of vigilance and scullery, slogging through diapers and dishes and muddy shoes, tripping over skateboards and trombone cases; cringing through “new math” and piano lessons and teacher conferences; white knuckling through drivers’ ed and first dates.

If we are crazy enough to ante up beyond their eighteenth birthday, we enlist into the uniquely suffering platoon of those who forfeit privacy, serenity, security, relaxation and retirement until our ungrateful, ever molting flock finally fly from the coop. Unfortunately, some parents by then have completely lost their sense of individuality and personality, and actually miss the prodigal brats even as they are writing a check to the utility company to keep their little beasties’ lights on.

I have only realized recently why intelligent, civilized, sophisticated people subject themselves to the indignities of parenthood: it’s because of the golden, exalted, beatific prospect of grandparenthood! My finicky son, who rejects an array of tasty offerings from his mother, considers his grandmother’s saltines a gourmet treat. He bends down at each flower in her garden, sniffing with wonder and appreciation, when just days before handed his mother some hastily plucked dandelions as a gift. The presents his mother gave him lay abandoned in the corner toy box, while he takes the Spiderman his grandmother gave him to bed at night. The moment he recognizes her street, he struggles to be unhitched from his seat, so he can leap from the car and run to the door in anticipation of Grandma’s greeting hug. Grandma can do no wrong. She makes the best cookies, the best soup, and has the best toys, even though they are thirty years old and he would sooner step on them than play with them in any other venue.

Yes, it is a rude, cruel job, this parenting gig. But at least I know what I can look forward to now that I’m a grandmother!

Every red-blooded American girl born in the last 50 years has a deep, dark secret she won’t admit to anyone. No, she doesn’t fake all her orgasms. Ok, some of you do, but that’s not it. This is not about sex. Well, not about that kind of sex.

No, the secret is… she wishes she was born a boy. Yes you do. Liar. Admit it.

She may enjoy being a girl and does a bang-up job of it, maybe she’s the most feminine little kitten you’d ever meet, but she at one time, or a lot of the time, or possibly most of the time, wishes she were a man.

Why? Well, come on. Who runs the world? Men – most of them white men born in the 50s. All that “women’s lib” and “You’ve come a long way, baby?” It’s a bunch of crap. By the time girls figure out they have to wear pink booties instead of blue booties, they know the jig is up: doomed to have to work twice as hard, be twice as talented and be twice as smart just to prove they’re equal to their brothers. And even after how many years now? – they still get paid about half of what men get paid for the same job.

And the worst thing is? Women can’t get old. We’re expected to be youthful, beautiful, fit, feminine, and fertile. Men are allowed to get old – they get “distinguished” and “seasoned.” Men can get fat and hairy and reek like the county fair cattle pen and still have power, money, careers, young lovers. But women? No way. If a woman gains weight, turns gray, wrinkled or sick, she’s shipped off to the glue factory like a lame brood mare. This happens sometime around age …. 35.

Now, I’m not telling you this to whine about inequality. That’s just reality. What discourages me most about is that we were lied to! I came of age in the last 20 years of the 20^th century in the richest, most advanced country in the world and all the adults in my life – parents, teachers, professors, bosses, politicians – told me that if I worked hard, kept my nose clean, got good grades and followed the rules I could do anything a boy could do. That, my friends, is a big, fat lie.

I’m not ashamed to admit I wish I had been born a boy…just because you won’t. Back in the 70s when boys looked like girls and girls looked…androgynous, I was mistaken for a boy a few times in the girls’ locker room at the local swimming pool. Some little girl would point to me and call out to her mother, “Mom! There’s a BOY in here!” I had short hair, wore baggy t-shirts and cut-offs like every other girl in the neighborhood. Ok, I had an ironing board shape and a lanky build, so it wasn’t that crazy. And at first, I was insulted, but then I decided this might prove amusing, so I played a little game seeing how often I could pass myself off as a boy. I even called myself “Adam.” Sometimes I had to get my little sister or a friend to play along, but it worked. A lot. I even won a few bets.

By the time I was 16, I didn’t want to look like a boy anymore, but I still didn’t have any…curves. One of my first jobs was at the Brown Derby where I was a “salad girl” back when salad bars were all the rage. I wore the same uniform as the bus boys. Really sexy. I used to haul out heavy crocks filled with garbanzo beans or Thousand Island dressing or disgusting pickled beets (I can still smell those things), and replace the empties and freshen the ice and clean the counter. Yeah, it was harder than being a bus boy and I got paid about half since I didn’t get any tips. One day this huge 300-pound man was standing in front of the salad bar piling on the fixings as if he hadn’t eaten in…oh, about an hour, and I had to get by. I’m standing behind him struggling with these 40-pound crocks, asking in my most polite voice, “Excuse me, sir, can I get in there?” I said this like four times and finally I nudged him a little with my elbow. He turned around, bloated face reddened with rage, grabbed my arm, nearly knocking me over, and said, “Look here, Sonny! I’m gettin’ my salad!”

Sonny?! I mustered up my courage and said, “I’m not your SONNY! I’m a girl! And I need to get in there!” He looked a little embarrassed, but he didn’t apologize. This was just one of many lessons I’d learn about what it was like to be a girl in a man’s world, feminism be damned.

To be continued.

In his youth, my father was Billy Bigelow: a talented, self-confident rebel with a chip on his shoulder who misspent his days in bowling alleys, pool halls and marathon poker games. After marrying young and suffering the continued disapproval of his stern and distant father, and the recurring disappointment of siring nothing but daughters, he finally had the son he always wanted. Dad taught his son to play ball and respect authority. He taught him to fight with boxing gloves and swift footing. He mentored, molded and monitored, and allotted the greater part of a narrow attention span, dulled by uninspired work and martini lunches, to his prince. The prince enjoyed privileges and prestige among his flock of sisters, who became hardened and nondescript in his shadow.

I think he was a great dad to his sons; no doubt about it. To his daughters? Not so much.

That my sisters and I suffered various consequences from our tepid (if not tumultuous) relationship with our primary male figure there is no doubt. We all took refuge in the usual ways: food, drugs, emotionally crippled men. Women like us (and there are gazillions) keep shrinks in business.

However, the moral of the story is, if you want to be a good father to your daughter, love her well, take her seriously. You will spare her a lifetime of bad relationships and yourself untold sleepless nights.