hower thoughts. You know the kind. When the water is running like a back massage and your brain — finally free of distractions — starts tossing up revelations you weren’t even looking for. Sometimes they’re small. Sometimes they’re life-changing. This one hit me somewhere in between.
In the middle of washing my body, the warmth of the water sliding over skin that feels both familiar and foreign, a quiet awe bubbled up. This body. Nine pregnancies. Eight rounds of nursing. Years of weight gained and lost, hormones surging and crashing, skin stretched to its limits and beyond. And yet here it is — still holding. Still containing me. Still standing. After everything I’ve put this body through, I’m surprised it hasn’t simply quit on me.
When I mentioned this to my partner, he said flippantly: “Maybe you shouldn’t have let someone do that to your body.”
Now, this was seemingly innocuous — he isn’t a bad man. This is just systemic thinking.
As if pregnancy and birth were things done to us. As if a woman’s body is a passive vessel, not an active participant. As if we should shoulder the blame for centuries of coercion, expectation and sacrifice disguised as love.
This is Orwellian doublespeak in action: Men call themselves our protectors — yet we’re the ones needing protection from them. Laws insist our bodies aren’t ours — but when damaged, we’re blamed for allowing it.
Meanwhile, the men writing these policies — the so-called protectors — can’t even manage basic hygiene. Studies show … 62% of women report their male partners have “gross hygiene habits.” These are grown men clinging to toddler habits, yet they wield power over women’s bodies without hesitation.
My sister asked me how this all ties together. I told her: “It’s about the double standards. Women are expected to hold impossible standards while living under systems that strip us of control. We’re told to be strong enough to endure oppression, yet blamed when our bodies and lives are destroyed by it. Meanwhile, the men making decisions about our lives — the ones calling themselves protectors — can’t even clean their own backsides properly.”
And when the destruction comes, they don’t ask what they could’ve done differently. They ask us why we didn’t stop them. This is Orwellian doublespeak. Protector means predator. Agency means blame. Sacrifice means failure.
So let’s call it what it is: Put your money where your purse‑lipped, orange‑lined, self‑tanner mouth is. Free mommy makeovers, free day care, free education, free health care — or stop bribing wombs like we’re cheap labor for your crumbling empire.
But that’s just the mother in me, the woman, the people builder. Thinking always toward the future, toward the children.
MaryElizabeth Olsen
Valencia
