Freedom of Choice

In college, I was a women's studies minor. I just found the field of study fascinating.

Only problem is, outside of my women's studies classes, no one, not even my girl friends, ever wanted to talk about feminism. Not while at happy hour after on Friday night, not on a cigarette break while pulling an all-nighter before a big paper was due, and not while meeting for coffee in the student center. Indeed, there was no place for all of my feminist opinions on the college campus, which was odd, because I thought that would be the one and only place to share them.

So anyway, then I graduated and years went by and life took over and I may have sold my soul just a teency bit (no more than the rest of us), and I pretty much had to push all of my women's studies knowledge deep into the recesses of my brain.

I mean, I didn't totally let go of my beliefs and forget everything I'd researched and read. I'm still me. And that feminist in me comes out every now and then, like when I have to remind men that strippers aren't stripping just for fun. No stripper wants to be stripping. I assure you that something went wrong at some point in her life and she is not happy that she is sticking her boobs in your face, dude. And she doesn't go home and soak in a tub of bubbles and glitter. She sits at her kitchen table with all of her bills spread out in front of her, trying to figure out how to pay them.

And the other night that "What the fuck?" feminist part of me was stirred up once again. 

In the bathroom at Cat & Fiddle at Hollywood.

I ducked in there to pee and saw one stall door closed and the other door open, but the floor was covered in purple puke. Wine vom, obviously. And feeling quite certain that I'd be the type of girl who'd slip on the puke and clunk my head on the toilet bowl, thereby knocking myself out, leaving me to be found by the next person who walked in and then thought that the puke was my own, I thought I should just wait for the other stall to open up.

While I waited, I saw this:



Yes, it's a tampon and pad dispenser that offers women a freedom of choice. A freedom. Of choice.

The wording. Oh sweet mother, the wording of this freaking thing. How obnoxious. As if there was no other freedom of choice that already gets to be The Choice that women are concerned about their freedom to make.   A right to choose something more important than a tampon or a pad.   

Well, ladies, rest easy. Your freedom of choice is safe and secured to the wall of the bathroom at Cat & Fiddle.