Hold onto your seats, folks. It's about to get real uncomfortable in here.

I'll try to be tasteful, although the subject matter is going to fight me every step of the way on this.

I'm far enough on now, that I can truthfully say that the Myth of tampons are far behind me. Of course everybody has a first time. Consensus will vary, but the general order of it will be like this. You'll have left the house with a purpose, one that you will have made out to be much larger than it really is. You'll enter the high street drug store and have that particular feeling that everybody is looking at you. Nobody is looking at you. The checkout girl glances at you derisively, the forty something woman in the hairdye aisle eyes you speculatively, the well to do lady at the fragrance counter will smile in a way that alerts you to the fact that everybody in a three mile radius knows you're buying your first packet of tampons. You feel this hot flush all the way up your cheeks and down your neck as you detour through hair and nail accessories, deodorants and body sprays, even shampoos and you'll blindly pick a series of things up that you don't need. Finally, finally, you'll hover around the female sanitation aisle. Somehow, staring down a bottle of intimate body wash is less shameful than what is two shelves over. A glance reveals more choice than your young heart can handle - lites, regular, super, super plus. Woah. You'll grab what you can as best you can with your three bottles of nail polish remover, one nail clipper and organic loofah. The last is one of the mistakes that you'll only realise at the counter.

You arrive at the check out desk with a determined smile beaming past your inefficient heat source of a face and the check out girl, somebody you'll envy and hate in equal measures will ask you a series of questions about plastic bags and would you like to buy a top up and, God help us, if you want to go back and get another box because they're "on a threefertwo offer...". You will mumble to the impulse buyer rack of chewing gum that no, you are quite okay. She will pause for a moment at your ridiculous behaviour and you will use that moment to lament ever having been born a girl. A frantic monologue begins in your head concerning fervent wishes to be reborn right at this very moment a boy. Your nails bite into the cheap fabric of your purse. She'll shrug, continue scanning items through. Nail clipper, lip balm, deoderant, deoderant, deoderant, and of course she now sees that it's not this "threefertwo"er that you're scared of, Cosmo girl, shampoo, good lord, your leg is twitching towards the door, towards freedom, and you're wishing you hadn't picked so much stuff up, conditioner, deep conditioner, 28 washes hair dye, loofah -

how much? The black little monitor mocks you with an eye blinking number.

No, you'll say. Sorry, I didn't mean to pick that up. She'll already be well into the make up remover range. And so, because even technology is against you, she'll have to spend the next five minutes, and two extra check out girls figuring out how to cancel that item. Perhaps the organic loofah is worth it. You'll be on the edge of making the mistake of telling them to forget it when thank you God, it's over and she's telling you an amount that you're so prepared to pay to just get out of this shop....

Of course, you're a menial amount of money short. Really menial. The kind of menial that, were you in her position (oh, hope springs eternal), you'd definitely forget about. This girl has no such philanthropic ideas. That's another seven pence. Please. Crooked smile. Panic. Shame. Death. May a thousand firey suns, etc.

The seven pence is elusive, at best. Hidden in the crook of the back pocket of your purse, it evades capture for at least 3 hours before it emerges and transpires to be a 5 pence. The well to do lady standing in the queue behind you, clutching a Givenchy scent, proffers a much-put-upon sigh and throws an extra five pence piece down and so help you God, you high tail it out of there sweating like a blind lesbian in a fish shop.

Sorry, sorry. Tasteful.

First time, you'd do anything for that first time to be a never time.

I'm staring as we speak, at the little paper leaflet that comes in every box, like medicinal instructions. Side effects may include permanent trauma, they forgot to add.

Your first time? This page asks me. No, I reply. Really, no. I begin to feel a lot older than I should do. Tips for beginners, it offers. How a [Brand de choix, no free advertising here!] works. Complete with diagrams. All these years later, I still feel the heat settling over my cheeks. I could almost laugh at the things I'll do without shame, but these clinical pictures are taking me right back to the one legendary state prescribed sex ed lesson. (This lesson turned out to be more about periods and less about tab a and slot b). Oh how I laughed then. What a joke, I thought. Little did I know. Standing in my mother's bathroom, cluthing the cardboard box, willing with all the strength of my mind that nobody would knock on the door, I stared at a different version of this same page, thinking that this was my penance for laughing at the lady who came to the school specially to talk us through Becoming a Woman. She was like a travelling sales woman, and I really wish I was buying what she was selling.

Should have listened, says one of the charming young girls on the page. She's black, which is different, and supposedly in her mid teens, which is sensible I suppose. She's wearing a weave, which is sad, for reasons I'll go into another time. She's shrugging her shoulders, apparently confused but the big grin on her face tells me that she had a much better time of it than I did. Her counterparts on the other side of the page stand casually under a comical cloud full of question marks. I don't remember looking or feeling so happy to be confused about this. Did I miss out on what should have been a joyous right of passage? I don't think so. Limited and somewhat discreet research tells me that it was as excruciating for almost everybody. I don't understand what these multi million pound corporations hope to achieve by lying to the young girls of our Western societies. Staring at a cheeky grin next to the tampons FAQ [ed - oh God - can a tampon get lost in my body?] would not make me feel any better about what I'm about to do to myself in the name of a) sanitation b) social necessity [Don't tell me that anybody who's anybody still uses pads? They're like the training wheels of female sanitation.] and c) the perpetuation of the human race.

Not to mention the afterthought-ish strip dedicated to "TSS Information". What a joke! A string of worrying symptoms finished off by a token "you can also essentially eliminate the risk of menstrual TSS by not using tampons". they then link to the brand website for more information, rather than the not for profit toxicshock.com. Who am I kidding, fatal illnesses don't sell tampons.

I mustn't act so surprised. Every single day, companies make money from hiding/manipulating information that should and could affect our product buying decisions....free will, Free Willy, free me from this consumerist trap.

Who knows the point of this rant. It would be ignoble of me to claim anything so honourable and serious as health issues [ed. - this syndrome kills less than five people a year in the UK and most doctors will never ever see a case at all. Ladies, pay attention.]. It would perhaps be a little more honest to call it a mixpot of issues. Misplaced concern, conformity, our old friend Capitalism, other C words [ed. - hurr, and indeed, hurr]. False advertising is a crime, and its a pity false ideals aren't, too.

Uno - doss - tressssss!

A short preface is in order, I'm sure:

Here's what I love about blogging. I am my own editor - verbosity is the name of the game, folks. Fingers on the ~intellectual discussion buzzers. Let's overstep the boundaries and the word limits. Real life has no word limits, and neither will my blog. Let this set the tone for the rest of this blog. Essentially, be warned. I will rarely, if ever, find the most effectual or efficient way to make my point. Thus, I believe, is the point of the blog.

And now - the life lesson.

*

Tonight, in the smallish city in which I dwell (allow me my thin veil of anonymity, please), I tried Salsa dancing. Oh, the sequins, oh the badly judged tequila shots.

Nevertheless, the salsa was danced; slim men with outrageously shiny tops with chest hair so abundant, it seemed to make up for their violently receding hairlines, the likely lads who, having been banned from every other bar in the city (let me reiterate, it's a small city), have turned to the obscure themed ones....and in return, have unwittingly picked up a few steps as well as a disastrous taste for South American beer and the awkward Date Night guys who have taken their lovely lovely ladies out (at her insistence) and would love nothing more than some regular, British beer and J Ross on the telly. And so it goes, this little hierarchy, give or take, their hair disappearing proportionately with their talent: receding, Number 1 back'n'sides mate, full head o' hair.

And let's also not forget the single women who, upon hearing the word 'Salsa' will invariably cast their minds to some rogue Latin lover with pointy shoes and an entrancing speech impediment who excessively rolls his 'r's and perhaps has better hip movements and than them. Accordingly, they'll find the tightest, most blinding dress with heels to match (co-ordinate, sweetheart, co-ordinate), douse themselves in the kind of perfume that attracts fruit flies for miles and keep swinging their heads about in a very unattractive manner that I can only guess seems to be coquettish to them. Oh stop, they giggle, wizened fingers pressing against the stained - sorry, tanned -skin on their chests as the man surreptitiously moves all that hair from his various facial orifices. Yes, I think, stop.

And then I reminded myself to be tolerant of the social context. Intellectual buzz words, baddabing, baddaboom. The average age of the patrons there tonight was around thirty. A somewhat considerable bit older than myself, I won't lie. It seemed surreal but then after a while, once I'd stopped judging everybody to within an inch of their polyester clothing, I suspended my disbelief and considered the facts. I, the average barely twentysomething young woman, will undoubtedly frequent different establishments than a niche Salsa bar. (cut to 18 year old Jane Doe, living it up and living it large on the Salsa floor, WKD and shot of Sambuca in one obviously multifaceted hand, cheap Primark dress clinging tragically. It could happen.) The way in which I flirted with my age mates of the opposite sex four years ago is thankfully drastically different to the way I do it now and the way in which I attract a man's attention now will be a distant memory by the time I'm 30.

I am, by the way, somewhat unsure as to where or when I will/have hit my peak, but that's irrelevant.

So to look around the crowded and sweaty dancefloor, to watch that charming young lady who has more hanging out of the dress than is held by it and her dancing partner who is clutching what he can (figuratively...literally....it's a tough life) find and mouthing one two three four...five six seven eight over her head and to judge, would be completely remiss of me. The idiot who was circling them, doing his leery 'hurr hurr mate, grab your coat!' bit, unidentified but clearly potent drink in hand is another question all together. I leaned away from his precarious grip on the cream and coffee colour layered drink and pulled my companion away with me.

I realised, at this point, that the similarities between age groups, social situations, classes, cultures, etc are more apparent than we perhaps allow for. Bear with me - my point is tenuous but important.

I cast my mind to my nights out at my Monday night spot, my Thursday night spot, my Saturday night spot. All very similar, with different idiotically named DJs, uncouth drinks and so on and so forth (that was not me you spotted with a half empty Smirnoff Ice in hand, how insulting). Although we are none of us out of the 16-25 range, and still find greatly important business in texting our friends while on the dancefloor, and making an adventure jungle gym out of the premises ('Sophie, you stay here with Louise, I'll go find Melanie and Nadia...meet me at the fire exit in five minutes. I am en route!), and getting mashed on as small a budget as possible, we are not so unlike the next age group from us, and the one after that. Yes, they have more money, more expensive clothes, mortgages, houses, regular cash flows...

However, they're essentially doing the same thing I do, in a different place, to different music. They're using different tactics to get the same kind of attention: paying more money to drink (albeit classier) alcohol, showing off different parts of their bodies to guarantee somebody to dance with. It amused me because I saw myself there tonight - a lady, early thirties with pretty but not-too-fussed-over hair, well chosen but not too revealing clothing, dancing with similarly dressed girlfriends in a circle...that's right, with their bags all in a pile in the middle of them....oh it was so familiar. I half smiled at her and before I could come to my senses, she had caught my smile and returned it, seemingly right on board with my epiphanic moment because her face seemed to say - why are you here? I used to be you, and I used to be off my face on cheap and sweet alcohol on a stickier dancefloor than this. You shouldn't be here.

I saw other people, too - I saw the 'dancing is srs bsns plz' couples at the front of the dancefloor, giving it all they had and maybe a bit more to their adoring crowd of tens of people. They reminded me of the couples at my Thursday night spot (the Urban night) who danced kind of like the girls and guys in the video while standing in a group of muzzly fans. When did those people in the video ever become the people to whom we aspire, by the way? I have moderately serious moral objections to that which I hesitate to voice because I know where I get my dancing tips from....

Anyway, I digress. I saw the lads' lads who do that same haphazard, jerky sproghop step to every G.D. song they hear, regardless of genre and regardless of present company. I saw the two girl-friends (the hyphen denotes platonic relationship) who stand nervously at the edge of the rhythmic commotion (filled with emotion...rrrrrrribaaaaa....) and fiddle with their hair, bag, bracelet, and startle like Bambi when they're asked to dance. They share a furiously brief and wordless conference. First friend leaves second to the whiles of dozens of other greedy men. Classic. Standard. Universal. I saw everybody. These social categories began to transcend age, race, and so on. I felt united with my fellow Bags-in-the-Middle girls. It felt new and exciting and enlightened. It felt like a social revolution about to happen in the downstairs bar of a not-so-well-known bar in the city centre. It felt like too many tequila shots on a Friday night.

My point is, if you're still with me dear reader, and what a shame it would be to lose you now, that we are often unwitting pawns to social influence and so fail to see the same or similar scenarios to our own happening in groups other than those in which we mingle.... These habits that I began to form at 16 when I bluffed my way into my first club, sans ID, will, I think, stay with me forever. They are habits I formed from watching the other guys and girls around me. When I'm 35, I'll still be busting a move on a dancefloor somewhere but I'll be decidedly better made up and probably looking for a life partner and not a quick pull. My younger self will be a vague ghost in the back of my wardrobe, tied up with Pradamark rip off fashions and New Look heels and a quick spray of Sure deo in the bathrooms. My path (the studying, the clubbing, the what not), is a not too specific one - one that many have followed, and will come to follow. I'll probably move on and become that woman I saw in the club because I am as of yet, not quite ready for my own little social revolution. I think this is what we call social conditioning.

It's the same social conditioning, I dare say, tells us not to show up at our daily grind/early morning lecture/night shift/whatever dressed for a Toga Party. ie, tells us to do 'the done thing'. Okay, you see, my point is gaining validity because I've just linked to an interesting article by Krista at Muslim Media Watch, you see how I did that? Extensive anecdote, link to a somewhat controversial site? Yes, Muslim! The M Word! Its infamy is duplicitous now - everybody and their mother will bring up The Muslim Thing for a good debate over a Thursday night Question Time. It's been done, I know, but hear me out. This point, link, explain thing is beautiful mechanism. I'm starting slow, on the well trodden ground.

Krista makes an excellent point, in her own blog entry, when she reminds us that not only is choice socially contextual, but that a) the "choice" that Muslim women appear to make to wear the burqa in order to conform to social expectations is not a long leap from the choices Western women make to, say, wear make-up on a night out b), eradicating this choice by banning the wearing of burqas does little or nothing to actually deal with any actual oppression that Muslim women may face (may I just make the point that many women in the West have proved that how you dress has little or no correlation to whether or not you are abused. There are a lot of places on the body and in the mind that bruises don't show up) and that c) by trivialising or rubbishing the idea that Muslim women can actually have a choice because they cover their bodies to adhere to the social conditioning of their own cultures, a damaging, insulting and long term misunderstanding of alternative cultures is begun or perhaps perpetuated. If they can't actually really make a choice on this matter, what else are they incapable of taking a stand on? Er....girls, with your insy wincy denim skirts and sky high heels and what's left of what I'm sure was a nice top - did you just say "no means no"...??? Sorry, I didn't hear you over the sound of the catcalls of those 7 guys you walked past (who, by the way, are calculating their odds of seven to three in the car park. Fancy it?)

I ask this question to and maybe even on behalf of the wronged women of this world. What is so wrong with legitimising choice? Are we destined to live by these double, triple, nth-le standards until we hardly know which way is up, down, wrong, right or West? In as much as we lay ourselves to the clutches of Saturday nights out with a greasy something in a polystyrene box, can we not allow other women elsewhere to do the done thing be it cover their bodies or otherwise and get on with it? If we are to force others out of their box of conformity, do we not also owe it to ourselves to explore what else is out there for ourselves? Why is it that our sense of moral "feminist" rights only shows its chameleon face when we "fight for the rights" of other women? Where is this concern, I wonder, for the thousands of women who litter the streets of the West, selling their bodies for money etc because they have no place to go? Do they also have a choice?

This is not to declare the issues of oppressed Muslim women negligible - not at all. This is only to say that if the choice of dress for Muslim women, is to blame for their apparent lack of choice, individuality etc in this world, then the same can, should and will be said for the women of the West. Conversely, if the women of the West can retain their ability to make effectual and real choices, irrespective of their clothing choices, then so can Muslim women. There are cases where the clothing has been worn against the will of the woman in both cultures. We can't say conclusively in variably that the burqa oppresses the wearer just like we can't say that the clothing some women in Britain, Europe and America wear is fully an expression of themselves and how they feel.

It's incredibly irresponsible for Nicholas Sarkozy to suggest, even indirectly, that forcing women to remove an item of traditional clothing will go any way at all to eradicating instances of abuse, forced subservience and loss of identity. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that if a husband or anybody else is really hell-bent on causing some pain, physical or otherwise, there are dozens of ways to do it. Can you imagine how awful it would be to be for that abused mother of 3 in Surrey to be handed a pair of overalls and be told that this will solve her abusive husband issues before being pushed back into the house and locked in?

If this is really an argument about the unseen face of domestic abuse in Muslim communities or gender inequality in Muslim communities (and I suspect, dear reader, that it is not. Mind my skeptical ways), then let's a) give the topic enough respect to give it a proper frame of discussion - not choice, the lack thereof or otherwise, or anything else so banal and irrelevant and b) try to seriously do something about the same things going on in Western Countries

....

On a finishing note, I'll link to the unashamedly liberal rant that an associate of mine earlier wrote which discusses the issue a lot more seriously than I did, with several good points to say about the unfortunate backlash of fervent secularism. The way I italicised associate there has you thinking, doesn't it? Good. I hope that if nothing else, this entry has you thinking, or I have spectacularly failed in my pursuits and wasted a lot of yours and my time.