In Praise of Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2016 ~ biggirlpants ~ 2 Comments

It’s a partly cloudy Sunday in February, and I’m enjoying the kind of gentle hangover that will ensure I cry when watching Call the Midwife later. It is also Valentine’s Day, AKA: The Best Day of the Year.

Valentine’s Day is underrated; a holiday that convinces people they need to spend money and / or wear crotchless pants as a demonstration of love: what could be better?! It’s like Christmas, with a boner.

In this post, I will henceforth refer to Valentine’s Day as ‘VD’, that this is also the acronym for Venereal Disease has not gone unnoticed.

Here are some great things that happen coz VD:

Adult humans give each other cuddly toys

The precedent is set at 13 years old, when boyfriends and girlfriends gift one another Forever Friends merchandise and “horny devil’ teddy bears.

As a prepubescent teenager, an infantile toy with horns is an appropriate expression of affection: I like you. You make my groin feel weird.

As a fully grown adult, if you find yourself in the 7^th circle of hell (AKA the Build-a-Bear Workshop) making a stuffed bunny that can whisper sweet nothings to your loved one so you don’t have to, then you have taken a wrong turn in life.

Missing the Mark

If you are in a new relationship, VD represents a minefield of insecurity and potential disaster. There is no way of knowing how grand your romantic gesture should be. You are aiming for a fraction less intensity than your partner, something that says, “I give a shit about you, but my gifting really says more about me and how creative, fun and intuitive I am. Also, I promise I’m not needy. Please love me.”

A friend of mine once exchanged cards with a new BF.

Her message:

I Love you, you’re amazing x

His message:

Wreey!!! Happy Valentine’s day m8

Special Occasion Sex

Look, I don’t want to judge anyone else’s sex life. But I will.

Special occasion sex is depressing. From a Birthday Blowie, to a round of Crimbo Cunnilingus, if you only do these things out of a sense of annual duty, then maybe don’t do them. Unless you like doing them, in which case just do them as much as possible you repressed idiot.

I was first made aware of special occasion sex when I was 15. I worked Saturdays as a till girl in a local garden centre. During a cigarette break, my tabard-clad colleague asked me what I was getting my boyfriend for VD: “A Thursday T-Shirt” I replied (for those who don’t know, Thursday were an emo band, whose slow jamz include “Understanding in a Car Crash” and “War all the Time”).

What was she getting her paramour?

“I’ve got a candy thong, and I’ve wrapped up a bottle of lube. Gonna let him do my ass”

I asked if she’d ever had anal sex before, “Once, with my ex. It’s fucking painful mate”.

Firstly, if something causes you pain in a non-fun BDSM way, maybe don’t do it? Secondly, a candy thong is a one-way ticket to thrush and a crime against confectionary.

Making fucking weird gifts

There is a certain despicable breed of person who becomes Kirstie Allsop in the run up to VD. They seem to think that if they craft something (and ideally something with a sense of humour), that they are not lowering themselves to the dirge of VD celebrations, and are being totes ironic. In fact, they are engaging with the holiday in a more earnest way than even the Build-a-Bear set.

I am one of those people.

For my first February 14^th with my current partner, I made a functional Zoetrope complete with two animated strips. One was an erection growing and dying in a loop, and the other was boobs jiggling. Both were in watercolour.

A friend of mine once made her boyfriend a bouquet of bacon roses for VD. She was (and still remains) a vegetarian.

WTF

Being Single

For most, VD is not a cause to celebrate ironically or otherwise. No matter how rational and level-headed you are, even if you don’t give a shit about being single and have no inclination to find someone to spoon on the regs, somehow, VD will find a way to make you feel shit.

One year I went out with a friend and we snogged truly rank, lonely men.

One year I had four wanks in a row, and then watched Jonathan Creek.

Last year, my friend ate a microwaveable macaroni cheese, and drank a mini bottle of Prosecco.

All of these activities any other day of the year would represent a wonderful way to pass the time, but on February the 14^th, they acquire the tone of a protracted sigh.

I will leave you with the news that it is now possible for you to experience true magic on VD, with a beautifully prepared meal at the Harry Potter™ Warner Bros Studio Tour. At only £495 for a pair of tickets inclusive of a ride on the shuttle bus from Watford Junction, what could be more romantic?

I know where I’ll be directing my Engorgio charm tonight, amiright?! 😉

#Dumblewhore

Why it’s Okay to be a Wanker

October 24, 2015October 24, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ 1 Comment

As motivational posters in your Facebook feed will tell you, true peace in life grows from the root of self-love. They are definitely, 100% referring to masturbation.

I started young, with pillows and cuddly toys making my most intimate acquaintance. At that early stage in my wanking career, I wasn’t fixating on any sexualized images or thoughts, I was just physically doing something that made me feel good, like eating Frubes or picking knee scabs.

But somehow, I knew that this was different, and I would burn with shame and regret after every episode.

As I matured, so did my technique, beginning to add fantasies as visual accompaniment to the work of my now-dexterous fingers. Here’s an example of the kind of high-octane erotica we’re talking about aged 11 – 13:

I picture myself as young woman. I have grown miraculously large breasts, and thereby earned the honour of becoming Liverpool striker Michael Owen’s girlfriend.

Fearful of meddling paparazzi, Michael has built his bedroom at the epicentre of his mansion. It has no outward facing walls, and therefore no windows. It’s dark in there, and bare but for a comfortable double bed. Sort of like a panic room. But for intercourse.

Because I don’t know what sex would actually be like, I just picture our bodies moving beneath the 13.5 tog duvet, as if I’d successfully got two Sims to ’Woohoo’.

If you need to go and have a cold shower after reading that, I promise not to judge 😉

My post-watershed fumbling took the concept of safe sex to its extreme, and yet I felt overwhelmingly guilty about it, certain that no other girl did the same.

Around this time, the male half of my peers began to boast of their handiwork, exchanging tales of furious marathons, triumphant posh wanks into jonnies, nail biting near misses with earnest mothers, astonishing distances travelled by spaff, and even, horrifyingly, battles with soggy biscuits.

Girls? We absolutely did not pleasure ourselves. I remember one classmate’s admission that she’d touched ‘it’ whilst showering being met with horror and outrage from us all, even though she was quick to stress that it was just that her hand glanced over the area in giving it a wash.

Boys’ knobs were picaresque heroes on a wanking odyssey; girls had to pretend that the only action they got was cliterol-collateral in maintaining basic hygiene.

This pretence continued until I turned 18 when, bizarrely, Ann Summers parties became a highlight in the social calendar. To those who have never been to an Ann Summers party, imagine your mum’s done a buffet for your Nan’s birthday, but in between rounds of cocktail sausages, sugary wine and small talk, someone you’ve not met before makes you hold an 18” vibrating dildo to your nose to see if you sneeze, before pressuring you to order one along with some chocolate scented lube from a mail order catalogue.

Perpetuating the binary notion that women are either sluts or angels, we went from refusing to even acknowledge a bit of light fingering, to competitively listing out the tech specs on our latest sex toys.

There is nothing wrong with having a tool kit that enhances personal pleasure, but it is depressing that female masturbation had to be so fetishized, even commercialized for it to be deemed an acceptable admission. Not to mention that a vast amount of these products are unnecessarily phallic.

As I grew up, these myths were eradicated within the comfort of my friendship group, but fear of female sexual pleasure insistently finds its way across time and space. We live in a world where at one extreme, FGM is still seen by some to be a legitimate practice, and at the other, we are encouraged to take pleasure into our own hands only via hyper-sexualised tools.

We have the male voice telling us female masturbation is shameful, and the male voice telling us it’s giving him a boner. Where’s the voice that says it can be natural, sensual, fun, invigorating, spontaneous, or whatever it is that you personally need or want to take from it? That is if it’s something you practice – I have one friend who doesn’t bother: she says it’s like trying to tickle yourself.

On that note, I’ll leave you with this charismatic stud for a bit of me time inspiration

Dream, Believe: Achieve – The First Rung of the Career Ladder

September 5, 2015September 5, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ Leave a comment

As a child, I was a precocious jebend. Between snogging my poster of Lee from 911 so much that he no longer had a mouth, and moulding myself enormous tits and a beard out of Matey bubble bath, I found time to cultivate an adult friendly persona of myself as ‘clever’. Aged 9, this was not some subtle Machiavellian plot, it was pretty straightforward: I started telling everyone that when I grew up, I was going to be a brain surgeon (spoiler alert: I’m not).

The reaction I got was pretty much a universal “that’s great! If you work hard enough, you can do anything!” Don’t get me wrong; I recognise the extreme privilege of an upbringing laced with Ashley Banjo style aphorisms, but it comes at a price.

Shortly after graduating, I went to house party with the depressingly appropriate fancy dress theme “when I grow up, I want to be a…” Dressed in surgical scrubs, wired, drunk, and redecorating my friend’s bedroom with Red Stripe, I noted with a flicker of painful lucidity the contrast of how I was dressed, with what I had actually become: a production runner.

For those who don’t know anything about production, the runner is essentially everyone’s bitch. This often means emptying bins, doing lunch runs, dropping hard drives from one side of London to another. It’s hard, low-paid work done with the understanding that in moments of ‘downtime’ you will get training from your superiors, and everything else you will surely learn by osmosis. It can be fun, stressful and mind-numbingly boring, and like any job that offers ‘training’, certain employers will exploit you to fuck.

Here’s a list of fantastic tasks my friends, colleagues and I had the pleasure of completing as runners:

Princess Leia and the Gold Bellend.

“Hey, you, can you pop out and get me and my wife fancy dress costumes for that party that you’re not invited to tonight? It’s Star Wars themed, here’s our sizes” handed a post it “Nothing shit or cheap, want nice stuff, proper stitching, and it needs to fit well obviously. Take £200 from petty cash. Need them by 4pm.”

“…”

“Well on you go! It’s already 2. Oh, and on your way back, can you pick up 30 beers for the office? Has to be bottles, no tins. And limes.”

Violet Beauregarde II

“Can I get you guys a drink at all?”

“A blueberry smoothie please”

“Sure, so like bananas, blueberries and apple or something?”

Stony, unsmiling face.

“No. A blueberry smoothie. Just blueberries”

I went out and sourced a pint of blueberry pulp. It cost about a tenner, and was the texture of wallpaper paste.

Hula-Hell do you think you are?

“Hey, can you pop out and get me some ready salted Hula Hoops and some cheddar?”

“Sure, no problem”

“And then can you use the Hula Hoops to cut cylinders of cheese that fit perfectly within the potato rings?”

“…Sure. No. Problem”

4&5 The worst man I have heard of IRL

It’s 6pm, and my friend who was at that point 11 hours into her ? hour shift, gets called into an edit suite by an older male client.

I will pause here to tell you that this friend is extremely attractive, and was at that point, only 21 years old.

She walks into the room, and with a smile asks how she can help. The client leans back luxuriously into the sofa, and replies:

“I want a toffee apple”

“Oh, okay. I’ll see what I can do”

Dutifully, she spends an hour exploring all supermarkets, sweet shops and newsagents within a 1.5 mile radius of Soho.

She returns to the client empty handed, apologising profusely. Is there anything else she can get his Highness?

“The thing is. I really want a toffee apple. Improvise”

She cuts an apple into slices, drizzles it with honey, and brings it to the fucking Roman Emperor. He laughs, waves her away, and eats it.

The next day, this same misogynistic thumb of gristle summons my friend to his aid.

Having pictured him experiencing all manner violent deaths in order to get to sleep the preceding night, my friend then had to take a deep breath, put on a big smile, and ask once again:

“What can I do for you?”

“I’d like ten Mojitos, please”.

“Ten Mojitos?”

“Yes please”.

“Just want to be sure: you want ten whole Mojitos” (He is alone in the room, baring the editor who is busy working, feeling uncomfortable at the exchange, but also unable to contradict the client)

“Yep”

She goes out, purchases the wherewithal to complete the task, and comes up with a tray of refreshing minty cocktails. She sets them down in front of him, and he LAUGHS IN HER FUCKING FACE.

The Editor told her some time later, that before mission Toffee Apple, the client had eyed up my friend and said:

“I want to see how far I can push this runner”

Did you just shiver? Thinking about it shrinks my vagina.

In your first steps to forging a career in any given industry, you should expect to have to work hard, and start at the bottom.

But what you shouldn’t expect, is to be routinely performing skilled labour at minimum wage and on zero hours contracts. What you shouldn’t have to take on the chin, are comments like “you should be grateful you’ve got this opportunity” from people on 10 times your salary. And you certainly should never have to endure humiliation at the hands of people in a position of power over you.

I am optimistic that this monstrous breed of fuckwit is dying out in my industry: my current employers do not enable the kind of behaviour listed above, and I can’t ever imagine any of my contemporaries being such fucking cunts. But the culture of employees being exploited by their employers doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

So, if I am lucky enough to one day grow a human, sure I’ll tell them ‘”dream, believe, achieve”, but I will caveat that with “organise, strike, resist”.

Times Simple Transactions Have Become Unnecessarily Painful

August 16, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ Leave a comment

Picture the scene: it’s 9am the morning after a night that consisted of 7 pints of Guinness, overambitious ‘sexy’ dancing, and a falafel. With bloodshot eyes, you shuffle to the toilet, careful not to step too enthusiastically lest your head fall from its shoulders. Shame and bile creep up your throat, and your brain takes you through a grotesque slide show of the behaviour that led you to this moment: here you are, standing next to the DJ booth being ignored as you shout “Sean-a-Paul and Blu Cantrell” in a way that at the time seemed at once friendly and coquettish. Awww… And that’s you there, telling your colleague that when you first met them, you thought they were a cunt! Isn’t that nice? Oh! And here you are, chuckling at a stream of your own piss as you squat between two cars and your friend dry heaves over a bin. Happy days.

Oh fuck.

There’s no toilet roll.

Knowing that this morning’s bowel movements will be akin to a thousand blackbirds escaping a shoebox, you steel yourself for a regrettably essential trip to Tesco. Your only items on the motion-sickness inducing conveyor belt are a 12 pack of Andrex, and single can of Fanta Fruit Twist. And then some twat that you forgot about because you’ve hidden the fuck out of them on Facebook, bounds up to you with a trolley full of quinoa, kale and opinions, and after telling you about the promotion they got at their yoga iron man vintage post grad festival, gives you a pitying smile, gestures to your purchases and says “big night last night then?”

Here are some other occasions that buying stuff has resulted in being waterboarded by embarrassment.

Condoms

Hey, I’m a grown woman who has sexy sex. And do you know what’s sexy? Safety! Safety is sexy.

I am in one of those smaller supermarkets, and after wandering the limited aisles for the 5^th time, I resign myself to the fact that the prophylactics are behind the kiosk with all the bad things (hard liquor, cigarettes, and inexplicably: tampons).

No matter: I’m confident! I’m empowered! If you like it then you shudda put a bag on it… am I right?!

The only option on display is an enormous box of 24. Knowing that making such a purchase would almost certainly doom me to a year of accidental celibacy and permanently mummified fingers, I ask the young man behind the desk “Is that multipack of condoms all you have?”

“I think we’ve got some ribbed ones out back, hang on. Dave! DAVE! Mate, would you mind checking the store room to see if we’ve got any ribbed jonnies left?” By which point a considerable queue of giggling customers has formed behind me. I wait, the queue expanding, trying to avoid eye contact with the grinning checkout boy. Dave returns from his epic journey to shout, “None left, only the 24 packs and some tropical lube” across the store.

I mumble that I’ll take the multipack, and leave.

Cystitis Medicine

I have, of course, already run through the myriad reasons why cystitis is so fantastic, but here’s another one. A friend of mine went on holiday to Morocco with her mother, and was hit with a visit from the vaginal devil.

Together, they found a local pharmacy. Unfortunately, my friend cannot speak Arabic, and the pharmacist could not speak English, so what ensued was a nightmare game of charades in which her heroic mum kept pointing to her crotch, and then acting out ‘Fire’. All the while, repeating “HOT VAGINA. BURNING VAGINA”, to the amusement of tourists stocking up on sun cream.

Pregnancy Test

Buying a pregnancy test when you really don’t want to be pregnant is at best a nervy affair. An insecure 19-year-old, I scanned the selection, made my choice, and went up to the counter. The woman behind the till had kind eyes and a helpful smile. She scanned the test, looked up, and said in a tone that should really be reserved for telling someone they’ve won the lottery, ‘Ohhh! They’re buy one get one free today!”. Conscious of the people waiting behind me, and terrified that someone I know might be in their number, I garbled “that’s fine, I only need the one”. Her helpful smile grew even more helpful, as she started to step out from behind the till saying “Nonsense! You can’t turn down a bargain like that! These things are expensive!”

She nipped over to the relevant shelf, and then yelled across to me “Looks like that was the last one!”

“No worries”, I say as she makes her way back, but instead of resuming her place at the counter, she raises a finger “Now, I’ll just check out the storeroom for you”. Oh god. Her helpful, helpful smile was lighting up the room and demanding the attention of my fellow customers. Returning approximately 3 minutes later with a different make of pregnancy test, winking at me as she popped it into the bag, she asked:

“Do you have an advantage card?”

“No”

“Isn’t that one, there?” she points to my open purse from which I am removing a ten pound note.

“Oh right, yes. It is”

And with every bite of the ‘meal deal’ I purchased using said points some months later, I thought of my shame, and of that woman’s helpful smile.

The Physical Upper Hand

August 9, 2015August 9, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ Leave a comment

Google image search 'woman running with balloons'. There's an amazing volume of this shit. — Google image search ‘woman running with balloons’. There’s an amazing volume of this shit on the internet.

Yesterday, I went for a run. I like running, not least because a camel toe is an entirely appropriate accessory. Being a resident of London, I have plotted routes that allow me to pretend that I am not in London: back streets and alleys connect laps of parks, woods, and dog-fouled greens. When I am running, I could be in Staines. My current preference is for a disused railway that connects a small cluster of trees to a park. By London standards it is positively rural, and as such, it is congested as fuck. Yummy mummies, cyclists and biffter-honking teenagers jostle for space with dog walkers and optimistic foragers.

Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” keeping my pace steady, and a high SPF on my milky flanks, life could have been a lot worse at that moment. Running towards me at quite a pace was a 6ft man in his 30s, I realised too late that a more athletic specimen was just about to overtake me, so with both of us unable to edge to one side, and moving faster than we were aware, we slammed into each other. Like Telly Tubbies saying ‘eh oh’. It must have looked insane, so I did a laugh smile, put my hands up and said “Oh! Sorry!” expecting him to do the same. He did not; he got angry, and said “for FUCK’S sake, LOOK where you’re fucking going!” He stood there, glaring over me, and suddenly anxious to get away, I started running again, an unexpected lump in my throat.

Am I malcoordinated? Certainly. But in this instance, we were equally at fault, and equally innocent. Had I been an enormous be-muscled man, I feel strongly that Rev. FFS would have reacted differently, with far less, if any aggression. In fact, I think that even if my ripped-man alter ego had ran the length of the path with his eyes shut, arms flailing around, listening + singing along to “Mambo No. 5” on portable speakers, Rev. FFS would not have responded to the collision with such anger.

Physical + Verbal aggression demonstrated at times of sudden confrontation almost always follows the pattern of he who’s bigger, he who has the most power, assuming control and often righteousness. You see it in the playground, and you see it between countries, and how terrifically absurd it is that swagger and muscle can give you such a catastrophic sense of entitlement. If you are a man reading this, you may have on occasion been bullied or threatened by another, and I would bet handsomely that you have been the smaller, softer purveyor of dick + ballsack on the majority of these times. As a woman, you are almost always the vulnerable party, and nearly never have the power that comes with having the physical upper hand.

And it was shit to be reminded of this out running.

Dear Rev. FFS, I hope you slip on a dog turd in front of your crush, lots of love BGP xoxo

Hair Removal: What I have Learnt

August 3, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ 1 Comment

On a scale of bald to this guy

I’d put myself on the fluffier side of average. Day-to-day I pass for a facsimile of ‘woman with hair’, but in certain lights, I have the moustache of a 12-year-old boy who’s just learnt how to wank.

I fluctuate between letting my pits, legs and fanny get all ruggedly handsome, and ripping everything from my body in a burst of insecure rage. After a defrocking, I’m left feeling guilty about betraying what I believe to be right for me personally, but also more confident lunging on a dance floor.

Shame, relief, self-loathing; hair removal is in my experience akin to sleeping with an ex. Here’s what I’ve learnt so far:

Shaving – The First Time

I am 12. Shiny swirls of chestnut have sprouted in my underarms. I find my pit hair fascinating, and vaguely disturbing.

I board the bus into town to meet a friend (Woolworths has a new sticker photo booth installed) when two lush lads from the year above sit in front of me. One has voluminous curtains, the other a chic homage to Gary Rhodes. I overhear the following:

“Ere, did you see Becky’s hairy pits on Friday?”

“I did, mate. Manky as fuck”

I don’t know who Becky was, but her grave error in purveying spaghetti straps on mufti day allowed me to avoid committing the same heinous crime. The moment I got home, I took my mum’s orange bic, and hacked away at my gorgeous underarms.

Hair Removal Cream – Experimentation

I am 15. Healthy side burns have sprouted along my inner thighs. Not one of my friends mentions experiencing anything similar, so I can only assume that the Emmerdale extras sitting outside of my pants are an abomination.

I take myself off to Superdrug, where I stock up on Impulse (Hint of Musk – mysterious), glittery eyeliner and, as it was then known, Immac.

I apply what looks like Polyfilla and smells like Plimsolls to my muttonchops, and wait for the instructed length of time before scraping it away to reveal… severe sunburn decorated with iron filings.

Hair removal cream is a crime against science.

Waxing – Shit Just Got Real

You know how when you’re a kid you’re constantly told “Cheese is excellent for you. Eat as much of it as you can”, but then you get to 13 and it’s all “Hmmm, not sure you should be eating that much cheese. Here’s a carrot”? Well, as a young girl you are shamed into shaving – and don’t forget on PE day, whatever you do. You get to 17 and suddenly shaving is a terrible idea: it will make you even hairier and more disgusting than you already are, and if you don’t start waxing soon, you’re going to end up looking like fucking Chewbacca by the time your 35. Which is when you’re probably going to want to trick a man into making a baby with you, but your prospective victim will be so repulsed by the fact you look like this in a bikini:

That there’ll be no way of furthering your genetic legacy and becoming a mother, your would-be-baby-daddy will end up in the hairless arms of a fertile woman with fanny alopecia, and you’ll die alone with your cats, choking on a fur ball of your own creation.

I’ve been waxed by professionals, friends, an ex-boyfriend (not in some fucked up sexy way, in a functional I-can’t-get-enough-purchase-on-my-armpits way), and my sister. I’ve used cold wax, hot wax, and duct tape (toe hair emergency).

I’ve bruised. Sweated. Whimpered. Gotten covered in glue. And have developed the kind of ingrown hairs that should be donated to medical research.

A friend recently sent me this message:

Which sums it up nicely.

Bleaching – A Subtle Approach

A tash-bleaching acquaintance of mine once had the horrific experience of going to Fabric. The experience was made even more horrific upon discovery that her normally invisible bleached whiskers had been rendered into a full-blown Hulk Hogan by the UV lights.

Laser/ IPL – Disposable Income Drain

After 25 years of mutilating my Bradley Wiggins bikini line, I finally decided to spend all of my money on getting someone with a welder’s mask and a high-wattage light saber to stab-burn the hairs out of me.

My final session of pubic torture was scheduled at an ungodly 8am. I was extremely hungover, and it was mid-summer. In my clammy state, I had chosen to wear a jumpsuit with no bra.

My blood ran cold as the clinician uttered those fateful words:

“Okay then lovely, if you want to make yourself comfortable on the bed, and I’ll be back shortly”

She left the room, and returned 2 minutes later to find me naked but for some protective eyewear, and a pointless tea towel over my vagina.

As I lay there, puffing in pain, I had two thoughts:

Apologetic + naked go together like milk and grapefruit.
Instead of paying out of my arse for this experience, what I should have done is stop giving a fuck.

Cystitis: The Vaginal Dance with the Devil

July 19, 2015July 19, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ 1 Comment

Say to any woman you know “I’ve got fucking cystitis”, and watch as she exhales sharply, takes a moment to stare into the middle distance, and then turns to face you with the haunted eyes of PTSD before proclaiming solidarity with your current plight.

To celebrate this scourge of vaginas the world over, here is a round up of some of the reasons why cystitis is more vile than even this tattoo:

Violation of your right to privacy

The first time I got cystitis, I was a teenager with an A-symmetrical haircut and an age appropriate boyfriend. I told my mother of my mysterious eye watering symptoms, and quick-sharp came the reply:

“You’ve lost your virginity, haven’t you”?

I confessed (though elaborating no further), and we were momentarily plunged into that chasm of awkwardness that only a recovering catholic can create.

She then went through the physical articulations as outlined in my opening paragraph, called the GP for an over the phone prescription, and whisked me off for a nightmare game of supermarket sweep: antibiotics; cranberry juice, cranberry tablets, nettle tea, anti-inflammatories and, of course, those sachets (on which more later).

Machine-gunning down her illusion of my virginity, cystitis became the HYMANATOR: and yes motherfucker, it will be back.

Smug man enabler

“Hey girl, I know you’re in so much pain that you chewed off your own thumbs, but, ha, I heard that boning someone with a MASSIVE DONG causes cystitis. So, well… I can’t pretend I’m not a little #CHUFFED But yeah, get well soon bbz, and if you’re lucky, I can give it to you again, yeah?”

First of all, 100% not true.

Second of all, whoever started this rumour is a cunt.

(My money’s on Dapper Laughs)

Punishment for having a nice time

You know how in the mid 17^th century, everyone in Britain was constantly a bit drunk and fucked up, but then Oliver Cromwell came along and pissed on the party? Well, cystitis is the Oliver Cromwell of the female body:

Thought you’d just say yes to that 6^th larger shandy did you? Eating an entire pack of yum yums on a comedown are we? Playing a bit of naughty jigsaw on a school night is it?

Well… CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED, FUCKWIT! THE ONLY THING IN SANTA’S SACK IS CRANBERRIES!

Cystitis medicine was sent to test the gag reflex

Ever play ‘ultimatum’ with your mates? Deeply philosophical questions like: would you rather eat a poo that tastes like chocolate, or a chocolate that tastes like poo?

Here’s a real tough one. Would you rather:

– Drink only cystitis medicine for a whole week

– Imbibe 25ml of David Cameron’s spaff

See, it’s hard.

A friend of mine was once so disturbed by the thought of having to neck yet another glassful (stirring furiously all the while so that it doesn’t settle into a highly concentrated slurry of trauma), that she mixed a sachet into a petit filous.

She then proceeded to tragically shit on her own childhood with each spoonful of befouled fromage frais.

Middle aged male doctors

When things get really bad, so bad that the blood in your urine turns it the appetising colour of lucozade, only antibiotics can save you.

After crying at the receptionist in your local medical centre, you manage to grab a hot moment with Dr. IStayedUpLateReWatchingTheWestWing, only to be faced with this:

“Okay, so the thing is, you need to make sure you wipe front to back. Just a little tip, from me to you 😉 “

Oh really?! Coz you know, recently I ran out of sanitary products, so I fashioned a mooncup out of a jobby – what am I like?! Thanks doc!

I once endured a particularly painful consultation in which I was told that my bladder was probably bruised and swollen from all the sex with that enormous knob I’d been having, which culminated in Dr fisting an imaginary bladder, nodding, and repeating “Okay?” for a full 30 seconds.

It’s quite fucking sore

It starts with a dull ache and an urge to urinate that can never be satisfied.

In full blown form, you limp to the toilet, convinced you are in imminent danger of not only having an accident, but also drowning in a torrent of your own piss the moment your relax your pelvic floor.

You make it, just, and with watering eyes, sit on the porcelain throne. Extreme, overwhelming pain shoots down through your tummy and into your urethra, and after what feels like the length of the Archers omnibus, the tiniest, malevolently orange drop burns its way out of you.

Finally, delirium sets in, and encourages you to do horrible things in a bid to offset the pain. The best example of this I know is a friend who, at 4am and after hours of sobbing in the bathroom, convinced herself that it might be less painful if she were to urinate on those temptingly fluffy towels, rather than into the toilet bowl.

It didn’t work.

Fuck you, Cystitis.

Iain Duncan Smith, This One’s for You

July 12, 2015July 12, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ Leave a comment

This week, our Gideon dug out his nice red box from the family dungeon, touched up the crimson with the blood of lower-income families, buffed it up to a handsome shine with the spunk of the 1%, and then paraded it around like a Foxton’s employee jangling a set of Porsche keys at a BBQ.

Welcome to the first unadulterated Tory budget in 19 years:

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL AUSTERITY 2015

Top hits include:

No housing benefits for 18 – 21 year olds!
No maintenance grants for poorer students!

(coz you know, that’s totes unfair)

Brutal cuts to tax credits!
Some hefty relief on inheritance tax!
And of course, that feel good hit of the summer, ‘The Living Wage’!

Barely concealing his semi during the chancellor’s speech, the announcement of the ‘living’ wage proved a bit too much for Iain Duncan Smith. Here he is fisting the air and shouting “Fantastic!” :

“Hehehe, good one Gaston!”

Fantastic. Except that it’s not a ‘living’ wage, it’s a new minimum wage. Only for people over 25, Gideon’s generous £9 p/h won’t take effect until 2020… Oh, and when coupled with the cuts in tax credits, this is how things are actually going to take shape:

In further a Donkey Punch to gender equality, research completed by the House of Commons this week has predicted that the budget will take a total of £9.6bn a year away from families in tax + welfare changes, and that a disproportionately large £7bn of that will be taken from women.

Hehehehehehehehehehehhhh, good one Gaston!

Iain Duncan Smith, I leave you with the words of Limmy:

Fantasy vs Reality: Hell in a Cell

Image ~ July 5, 2015July 6, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ Leave a comment

In Head

IRL

Making a joke

– A sniper bullet deployed with a wry smile and impeccable timing.

– Everyone in vicinity laughing uproariously, and then taking to social media to quote me.

– In turn, their post gets multiple likes and shares: it’s a life changing experience for all involved.

– I’ve probably said something euphemistic that a be-paunched 1970s middle manager would be proud of.

– To a colleague.

– I am laughing so much at my own wit that half of the intended audience don’t hear it.

– I am reported to HR.

Flirting

– Darting eyes, some casual shoulder touching.

– Bystanders charmed by banter.

– Attractive friend of the opposite sex walks by at that exact moment, and shows enough pleasure in seeing me to inspire a pang of jealousy from flirtee.

– Aggressive blushing + hives lead to a visage resembling nothing so much as a UKIP placard.

– Threaten marriage.

– I am reported to HR.

Desert Island Discs

– I am invited onto show, having become some sort of national treasure. IDK what for.

– My voice is an octave lower.

– I make intelligent, sensitive music choices that inspire nostalgia and appreciation from audience.

– Kirsty Young is moved to tears.

– The most listened to track on my spotify is Rupert Holmes – “Escape: the Pina Colada Song”

– No one gives a shit

Having sex standing up

– Probably outside, against a tree.

– Using a branch for leverage.

– Bit like that scene in Atonement, but with a shade less emotional intensity.

– Culminates in mutual orgasm

– Anything used as leverage ends up broken.

– Involves squatting and other sexually uninspiring body positioning for both parties.

– Requires logistical prowess and general spatial awareness that I lack

– Culminates in hand job

Being groped on the tube

– I tear the offender a new arsehole with quick-thinking witticisms galore.

– Man is thoroughly humiliated and reassesses his attitudes on sexual assault and consent.

– Whole episode is captured on fellow commuter’s smart phone, and promptly goes viral.

– Top YouTube comments include “So much respect for this woman” and “LOOOL, that guy got OWNED”

– Couldn’t be 100% sure that hand on left ass cheek was there by design.

– Even though it moved in synchronicity when I repositioned myself.

– Even though the hand’s owner took the arrival of more people into the carriage as an opportunity to stand closer, and breath deeper.

– It must be in my head.

– I get off at next stop and move down carriages feeling incredibly vulnerable.

A TFL survey from 2013 found that 15% of women and girls had experienced unwanted sexual attention on public transport in London, but 90% of those people had not reported it. I, and some close friends are a part of that statistic.

Why?

Well…I probably made it worse in my head than it actually was.

It’s not really so big a deal on the sliding scale of bad shit that happens to women worldwide.

It’s inevitable.

FUCK. THAT.

Sexual harassment may not be an extreme example male violence against women, but it’s certainly the thin end of the misogynistic wedge. And MY, what an enormous wedge that is. Seriously. It makes The Shard look like a bungalow.

So, if it happens to you, or if you witness it, please, call it out.

Pop Culture Sex Ed

June 28, 2015June 28, 2015 ~ biggirlpants ~ Leave a comment

I can’t be alone in having experienced pre-teen years fraught with a naïve and burgeoning sexuality.

Too embarrassed to discuss my confused and ever-mutating feelings with anyone, I internalised the shit out of them, occasionally becoming over-familiar with soft furnishings. Eventually, I found an outlet by projecting the desires I didn’t know I had onto pop culture protagonists, letting TV romance narratives do the sense making for me. I guess that’s how some people get addicted to porn.

So, in the manner of a far too personal Buzzfeed list, here are the top four late nineties love stories that shaped my understanding of sexual love:

Fox & Vixen – The Animals of Farthing Wood

Fox ignited my passion for ginger men.

I was pretty jealous when Vixen was first introduced, but she won me over with her sleek bod, cunning eyes and straight-talking feist. The nuzzling, the licking, the burrow (cave) – Fox got there first, Jon Snow.

Hated weasel, little shit-stirrer.

Billy Kennedy + Anne Wilkinson – Neighbours

Mouth hanging open, still in my school shirt, the heady scent of skips on my breath and Blue Riband crumbs in my lap, this moment seemed the height of sensuality.

On reflection, it’s actually pretty creepy: cheap twangy jazz, the way he has to strain to get far enough over the sofa to touch her face with his lips, and a special shout out to the awkward reverse waddle from the scene of the crime.

Jessie Spano & Zack Morris – Saved by the Bell

This shit was illicit! What about Kelly? What about Slater?! Watching people succumb to desires against their better judgement blew my tiny prepubescent mind.

Incidentally, in my search for this nugget of SBTB glory, I came across this:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6047595/1/Just-love-me-That-s-all-I-want

Read only if you want to ruin your childhood.

Me + Zac Hanson – in my mind

In 1997, Zac was a drumming evangelical Christian babe. The Zac era crush was a game changer for me, no longer was I to be fulfilled by the romances of TV shows, I had learnt to day-dream my own convoluted narratives, this time with ME as the heroine.

My nightly fantasy ran thus:

Hanson make an impromptu visit to my primary school (a state school with a maroon uniform in the suburbs of a provincial British town). Their main objective in coming? To discover once and for all the identity of their number one fan. Upon Hanson’s arrival, my peers feign love for the golden-haired trio (having been picked on for my fanaticism, the injustice of this part of my invented narrative still makes my blood boil). But, just as Cinderella’s slipper fits her dainty foot alone, I am the only student able to faithfully recreate this with scented gel pens:

Hanson give me their nod of approval, and perform mmm-bop in my honour at our school assembly.

Zac gets chatting to me, and realises pretty quickly that I’m fucking cool.

I invite him around to my house for a chicken kiev and some potato smiles. It’s a hot day, and Zac confesses “Back home in Tulsa it’s always pretty cold, I aint used to the heat!” Ever the opportunist, I suggest a refreshing water fight – also a chance for me to showcase my rad hosepipe spray technique.

One thing leads to another, and Zac, laughing at my exotic sense of humour, puts his hands into my wet hair, and pulls me closer. The laughter stops – for this is a sexy love moment, and we snog.

My adoration of Mr. Hanson (who, by the way, now has three children, did someone say VIRILE!) faded in tandem with my penchant for hair mascara, but the trick of constructing in-head stories that feature me in a starring role lives on. How have they changed with age? Barring the occasional morbid “What I would say at X’s funeral & what they would say at mine” bonanza, not much tbh. And if you tell me you don’t do some variation of the same, I’m not sure I’ll believe you.

Big Girl Pants

dispatches from the bikini line

Comedy