I Am Woman!!! :: Personal Narrative Essay Example

I Am Woman!!! So, why don't gynecologists have contests to make it at least interesting? I mean, while you're lying there, legs splayed to the world, why not move things along with a touch of frivolity? Count-the-Holes-In-The-Ceiling-Tiles or Count-How-Many-Miles-'Til-He-Reaches-China or even How-Many-Organs-Will-Still-Be-Intact? The act of submitting oneself to the humiliation of inspection has, since the first cavewoman squatted in childbirth, loomed in the female consciousness as a unifying force likely to explode in repressed rage. Women have been prodded, probed, peered at, pared down, palpated, pregnant, penetrated and pawed since the dawn of civilization. From the information I have gathered over my years of blooming womanhood, the paradigm should be shifting as least as much as breasts to gravity. I am not alone. In locker rooms, sorority dorms, at Tupperware parties and at PTA meetings, sisterhood has been built on the collective misery from the malfunctioning and misfiring of the female anatomy. I have heard stories that would send television producers running for a time slot to resurrect "Queen for a Day." Who wouldn't be moved by the woman in Syracuse who felt like she had the flu--no energy, aching back and stomach cramps? To her surprise she delivered a nine-pound baby boy on the Simonized kitchen floor of her double-wide mobile home. That is some flu. Maybe, by now, there is a scientific name for it (so the condition can be recognized by the AMA for possible funding). Something like the Haagen-Daz Syndrome or Gherkin-itis would help these women and their doctors differentiate between the flu and pregnancy. Then there's the woman in Des Moines who, at the age of 75, gave birth to triplets and then sued her doctor for malpractice. The birth-control pills he had prescribed for her were not the correct dosage. So say her lawyers. It goes on and on. The sponsors of the show could give out huge prizes ranging from a year's supply of feminine pads to a gross of Midol. The grand prize, after the battle of the bulges, could be a trip to the Smithsonian Institution to view gynecological instruments from the period of Western expansion of the United States. That would cheer up the most distended and distraught among us. Nothing builds solidarity like good old-fashioned trouble. Women, blamed for being distracted by instinct, have a penchant for tracking the woes of their sisters.