A Woman’s Secret

Andre has become a femininst. I couldn’t tell you the actual day it happened. He’s always been a justice warrior in one way or another. I joke he wears his pants on the outside of his clothes like Superman. Always standing up for the little guy. It made him unpopular with certain people in his past, because he couldn’t stay silent where he saw an injustice occurring. And over time, he’s definitely developed more empathy and understanding for the plight of women in particular. Probably through loving me, valuing me and hearing me, he’s come to recognise the wrongs of the patriarchy and started to call them out when he sees them.

Sitting together in our living room recently, watching the unfolding of American feminist political history in the BBC showing of ‘Mrs America’, he was every bit as distressed as I was at how very little has changed for women (really, when you scrape beneath a very thin surface) over the last 50 years.

And it’s because of this genuine rising interest of his in feminist politics, his gradually but significantly earned allyship to the women’s movement, that I felt it was time to trust him with one of the most deeply protected secrets of femininity that is simply never discussed openly.

So this morning, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and rolled over to kiss his bald, olive-shaped head and gently wake him, I decided that was the moment to tell him something that I knew he had literally NO idea about.

“You know, sometimes when I wear a long nightie like this one…?”
“Mmm hmmm?”
“Well, sometimes, when I bend over to pick something up….my bum eats my nightie. Like…my butt cheeks literally reach out and grab that fabric and hold onto it when I stand back up again.”
“Oh. Hmm hmmm.”
“My bum just sort of says…oh I fancy this fabric, I’ll have some of that. And just reaches out and takes it and I have to put my hand round there to my butt and fish it out and say ‘No! That’s not yours.'”
“Like one of those toy grabbing machines in fairgrounds?”
“Yep. Just like that.”
“I see.”

I snuggled into his shoulder, and resting my hand on his, I continued…

“The thing is, nobody talks about this stuff. And being a man who has never worn a nightie, I knew you would have no idea. And it’s never even shown or even mentioned on TV or in films.

…Like…in ‘Pride and Prejudice’…a household with FIVE daughters, it’s gonna happen to at least one of them at least once a day. Slipping out of bed in those lovely big floaty white nightgowns, bending down to put on some dainty handmade slippers…you never once heard Lizzie Bennett mention that her bum had eaten her nightie. Not once. And yet, it would be happening all the time. Nobody ever talks about it. But now you know.”

I don’t know if it was the shock of this revelation of the authentic experience of womanhood, or if he just needed time to process what I was saying, but my wonderful male feminist just nodded sagely and then rolled away and buried his face into the dog. The conversation was over almost as swiftly as it had begun. But I know I we both felt closer for having shared this intimate knowledge.

Ladies, if we’re ever going to change the world, we need to have the courage to tell our men the truth. Some of them are ready for it.