You know the drill: You go to a gathering of women.
It could be a girl’s night out, a bridal or baby shower, a book club, a Tupperware/Scentsy/[Insert name of wildly popular new product line here] party.
And then no one wants to be first in line at the food table – especially if it’s dessert.
We all stand around and pretend that we don’t need food to survive.
No woman will grab a plate and go through the line first. It’s a pretend-I’m-not-hungry stand-off, when in reality, most of us have hustled and bustled all day – or week! – long to get enough done to clear our schedules for this three-to-four hour soiree in which we are supposed to relax, have a good time, and just be ourselves.
And this is regardless if we are married without children, single, or have one or several children. All women these days are busy – the last thing we need to do when we gather with other women is to pretend, to waste our precious hours of community time not being who we are, or exclaiming about how much we don’t need to eat anything on the menu.
We need to eat. We need to keep up our strength in order to keep up with our schedules – and maintain our sanity.
I am not polite enough to pretend I’m not hungry anymore.
And not just while I’m pregnant. There have been SO many people who have made comments along the lines of “let the pregnant woman eat.” This is true, pregnant women are often hungry. However, so are regular women.
Let’s just let all the women eat, regardless of the state of their uterus. Sound good?
And women: let’s stop waiting. We deny ourselves a lot in life, and whether that denial is free evenings because we want to excel at our career or Saturday mornings because we are raising children or the new shoes because really we ought to stock the pantry instead, we shouldn’t feel the need to wait for someone else to make the move to eat.
If we don’t pay attention to our needs, it’s not a guarantee that someone else will.
I am not polite enough to pretend I’m not hungry anymore.