Not for my father’s eyes or those of a sensitive disposition

If I’d known it was going to be this hard to have an ‘X’ chromosome, I would not have accepted the gift.

As a female, life is hard, believe me.  Age 12 or 13, those hormones attack us like Leapy Lee’s ‘Little Arrows’ hitting you everywhere.  Pretty much all of us are hit with puberty and the ensuing periods, pain, cramps, mess and sanitary expense (with VAT).  The only exclusion we get from that is pregnancy and don’t even get me started on that!!

Once we become intimate (no, I’m not telling you when I did) we then have to endure the delights of the cervical smear test….one word: Stirrups! And speculum, I know that’s two, but….

Now, I’m taking you on a journey North, which will go South eventually, at the time the above stops: sagging boobs, which are pummelled and bullied into two sheets of Perspex in order to get a camera photo – positively pornographic but not for the purposes of the Dark Web (unless you’re really twisted).

When periods finally come to a conclusion we might think things will get better, they don’t! We start the regime of mood swings (again), hating everyone and the hot flushes – remember, women don’t sweat.  The duvet cover flies across the room at night, windows open in January and wearing layers in order to shed them at will.

And there’s the cost of being a woman.  Our hair is more expensive to coif, it’s more costly to harvest our natural bodily fuzz, have you ever compared the price of pink or pastel razors to generic Bic razors? Our clothing costs more, our fragrances cost more than men’s colognes.  There are certain stores where cleaning equipment can be purchased cheaper than supermarkets which are mostly frequented by women – I’m thinking of you Halfords.

It’s almost as if women are VAT rated, or at least it feels like that.