Equal education and job opportunities can’t take away the fact that I still have tits.

Regardless of the leaps and bounds that were made by second wave
feminism towards equality in job opportunities and compensation, we
remain women. The previous generation may have had publicly throwing
away (not burned) their undergarments in protest of the 1968 Miss America contest,
but we as a gender still buy them in various degrees of decoration and
support. I'd hazard a guess that most of the women who were in Atlantic
City that day, wear something to keep their own breasts under
control. For years the only time I put underwear on was right before it
was going to come off in front of a camera, or I was going to dance on
a go go box.

I had this whole hippie thing going on where I didn't eat meat, eschewed deodorants as unnatural and never wore bras or panties.The
only conventionally feminine tendency I had during puberty was a
refusal to allow body hair to remain unshaved, because it was itchy.
Dried girly juice crusted into my pants didn't bother me and my perky
small-end of A-cup breasts didn't jiggle around enough for me to ever
need to be taken for my first bra fitting. What was the point in adding
a confusing sized and expensive garment to my wardrobe if the support
wasn't necessary?

I continued this way through my teens and early twenties until my
body remembered it hadn't finished puberty and decided I needed to
upgrade to a B-cup. I'm ok with that, bigger boobs are pretty awesome:
having a whole handful, possibly visible cleavage without feeling like
my chest is the site of a new skyscraper, bouncing around.

Wait, bouncing? Bouncing. Despite all of my refusals to wear perfume,
failure at learning how to cook, and determination to move large pieces
of furniture all by myself, I am now host to two soft squishy mounds of
flesh that need new garments to keep them from making a general
nuisance of themselves.

This constant reminder of femininity caused a change in my thinking
about gender roles. By no means am I saying we should throw out job
opportunities and respect for women as intellectuals, but considering
that women have to function around their breasts, bleed from the vagina
for 1/4 of their breeding years and are at higher risk for sexually
transmitted infections than men are, I think it's absolutely acceptable
for men to open doors and do the lifting of heavy things. Men should be
encouraged to take more of the responsibility of physically demanding
labor on their typically broader and more muscularly developed
shoulders. After more than a century of feminism isn't it time to drop
the gynocentrism and admit that some women can prefer painting their
nails to carpentry without betraying the suffragettes? I still plan on
taking my neon pink french manicured fingers down to the voting booth
in November and using them to voice my opinion about the next leader of
my country.