Tags
10 km race, Brazilian Wax, breastfeeding, Bring Back the Bush, clitoris, pornographied, swimming pools, these tags will get the blog so many weird visitors
None of my blog subscribers can accuse me of spamming their in-boxes with new posts during the past few months. There are many reasons for that. One of them being the unmentionable: my running. Yes, I am still doing it. And it has taken up quite a bit of the precious alone-time I can steal away from my family. And this means less time for blogging.
Actually, yesterday marked my first six months of running. “Hooray!”, as we love to shout here in Denmark. Any excuse and we’re at it: “Hooray”! As you may recall, I made a vow to not talk about it. I’ve done fairly well on that. Not as well as I’d hoped. I’ve done better on the running than on the not talking about running. Especially since I had a small injury that meant that I couldn’t run for a month and which made me miss my first big goal: an official 10 km race last Sunday. Hard not to talk about not running apparently. I was disappointed to miss the race, but seen as I unexpectedly ran my first 10 km in March anyway (yes, I am trying to brag, people. Please just indulge me and politely ignore it) it was almost OK to miss it.
Not me
I have to stop myself here before I make all this talking-about-running worse. I mainly mention it because it leads me to a more important, burning and rather vulgar issue. This is not for the squeamish, so consider yourselves warned. OK? I have warned you. You want to read this? Don’t blame me later. Good? Good!
During my break from running, my remote running coach, the wise Badass Aussie (henceforth to be known as Yoda), insisted that I keep exercising in some other fashion. As part of this scheme I have been going swimming three Sundays in a row. And let me tell you this much: Gentlemen, if you are having problems locating the female clitoris (is there any other kind? If so, please tell me all about it!), do find a way to take a field trip to the women’s showers in the public swimming pools of Copenhagen. Since the popularity of the Brazilian wax has spread like bushfire (so, so sorry – tried to stop myself but it couldn’t be helped) it is like one big clit fest around here. Turns out that “innies” and “outies” are terms that can be applied not only to navels but also to the part of the female anatomy popularly described as the “pleasure centre” in many a cringe-worthy trash novel.
If my interest was to look at ladies’ love buttons I would find myself a lovely lady and get to work. However, it is not. And even if it was, I don’t think I would appreciate the view while standing under the lukewarm shower with my feet firmly planted in other people’s abandoned hair, old band aids and dead skin cells. Although I like to think that I am all liberal and Scandinavian and stuff, I tend to get quite uncomfortable when being forcefully faced with grown women whose privates are barely distinguishable from those of their three year-old daughters.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not the new spokesperson for Bring Back the Bush. Trim away to your hearts’ delight, ladies! But if you plan on a trip to a public pool it would be most appreciated if you could leave at least a slim courtesy “curtain” to keep the most private part of your privates just that: private. It has come to the point where I am grateful when a woman with a wall to wall carpet steps under the shower across from me.
It’s bad enough when I go to the pool on my own. But sometimes I will have Linus with me. Linus, who is not yet four years old and thus thankfully still has an excuse to be ignorant about clitorises. Unfortunately he is also of a size that puts him at direct eye contact, so to speak, with all the “outies”. And I just know, with the certainty of an old fisherman who can feel a storm coming by the phantom ache in his amputated thumb, I just know that one day Linus will either a/loudly inquire into the function of said “outie”, b/inform the bare-naked lady that she has grown a rather unattractive wart (he will tell her if he finds it ugly) or c/ (nightmare scenario number 1) push the love button in an attempt to produce a loud noise, flash a light or, better yet, shoot lava/laser/fire. I beg for the mercy of the heavens: Let it be option a!
What is with all this sudden baldness? I blame porn!!! *points quivering finger at computer screen* But the interesting thing is that in my prejudiced mind, I wouldn’t mind quite as much if the be-waxed females at least had had the decency to invest in disproportionately large plastic bosoms, bleach their manes and get multi-coloured hair extensions and lip liner tattoos. Then my world would make sense. I would assume that these ladies were headed straight for an orgy on or off camera as soon as they were done showering and shedding hair (from heads only, of course), band aids and dead skin cells.
Not a pube in sight – I guarantee it!
But most of them look indecently average. Which sort of makes it worse. Like they are triumphantly signalling to their fellow swimmers: “Look at me, I may be a librarian, specialised in Nordic mythology and medieval looms. But I am also such a sex kitten that I pay people to pour boiling hot wax on my flaming loins and have them rip it off after which I will have to contain my through-the-roof libido for the recommended 10 hours post wax before I throw myself at my virile husband/lover/boy toy and engage in advanced Tantric sex non-stop for the next three weeks until it is time for another Brazilian. Oh, and yes I do realise that my clit is showing. I’m having it pierced this afternoon. So there!”
These guys are currently on a short break from their insatiable, clean-shaven wives who are temporarily occupied, demonstrating medieval weaving techniques to a large group of tourists from Blackpool. But not for long.
I know: This is beginning to sound like a bad case of envy. But honestly: While I embrace diversity and everybody’s right to be who they are, whatever their preferences may be, I am also a hypocrite who personally has a slight aversion against people who worship Thor and dress up in hand-dyed wool and bonnets on weekends to greet tourists with “God’s blessings”, only to move on to the public pool after Medieval Festival to put their sexuality on display to innocent by-swimmers.
I find it slightly hard to understand what is happening in this country these days in terms of boundaries. On one hand we have been so influenced by the world of porn that 16 year-old girls are gifted with breast implants from their mothers before their bodies are fully developed, women must be waxed to within an inch of their lives and people bleach their anuses (you can’t make this stuff up). And then, at the same moment, women are increasingly banished from public places if they have the audacity to breastfeed their babies in a place where other adults are having a meal. Last month, here in Denmark, The Board of Equal Treatment ruled that cafés had the right to turn away breastfeeding women because they might violate the modesty of other paying customers. Most women I have seen breastfeeding in public cover themselves so that all you see of their attributes is usually much less than they would show off in their party dress on a good night out. But men and women alike are falling over each other in public debates to comment on how offensive, vulgar and unnecessary they find it.
When did that happen? It was never a problem before. But thinking back now, I think it became a problem juuuust around the same time I first started seeing all the bald lady-bits in the showers. HAH! PORN! I knew it! So basically, our society has become so pornographied that people now perceive breastfeeding to be a sexual act that should be performed in private. But proudly parading your exposed lady-penis around the changing room is A-Okay? Please get back to reality, people!
I am not on a crusade against porn. But I do wish that it could be left in the private sphere, so I wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences on Sunday afternoons. And while I do realise that I am at risk of sounding like a neo-puritan with all this, please humour me and imagine if the next big thing would be for everyone to wear underwear, specially designed to show off their bleached anuses. How would that become you? Personally, I desperately hope that I will be able to get back to running by then. Because I don’t think I will ever be quite ready to face that.
Fee-faw-fum 