It happened again yesterday. If you’re getting a déjà-vu, so am I. The food baby has struck again. I wasn’t joking when I said that this keeps happening. It happened again yesterday, and so please bear with me while I get this yet-another-food-baby-story off my chest.
It happened so quickly, I didn’t even have a chance to react this time. I was in a French pharmacy, on holiday, shopping with a friend, buying my fave French shampoo and some very special toiletries for my baby niece. French pharmacy cosmetics are the best: the companies seem to spend almost no money on marketing, and therefore it seems all their money goes into making the products affordable and really great quality. Compare that with lots of brands in the UK, where huge posters of supermodels slathered in whatever beauty product they’re endorsing tower above you in John Lewis, creating insecurity and desire, and eventually leaving you at least 40 quid worse off.
So anyway, I’m heading for the till, and the shop assistant catches my eye and beckons me over, and I start to ask her do they have any more of the baby shampoo I’m after, because it isn’t on the shelf – knowing full well that the answer to that in French shops is always, invariably, a ‘No, Madame, if it isn’t on the shelf then we do not have it’ – when I hear a commotion behind me; the next thing I know, a woman behind me has elbowed my friend out of the way and is tapping me on the shoulder, and attempts to tell me that she was in fact FIRST in line for the till, and I should step aside and let her get served.
And before I even have the chance to react, the shop assistant butts in, politely but firmly: ‘Mais Madame est enceinte!’ (But Madame is pregnant!) – with a significant nod at me, and glaring at the woman.
I glance down at my stomach. I am on my period, I have just eaten a tiny lunch, and am wearing a baggy 2009 Whistles summer dress which drapes in an unflattering way around my middle. I look bloated beyond belief. I am powerless to argue.
And as I automatically start a feeble show of gesturing ‘If you want to go first, that’s fine, please go ahead’ – the antagonistic woman is already backing away apologetically: ‘Non, madame; si vous êtes enceinte,’ (if you are pregnant) ‘vous avez TOUS LES DROITS’ (‘You have EVERY RIGHT’. Literally, that last bit means: ‘You have ALL THE RIGHTS’. You have every single right in the world. I had a sudden vision of myself having all the rights, going on the rampage doing anything I feel like doing; taking a swig from people’s drinks as I storm through pavement cafes; having tantrums in shops; leaving a trail of destruction in my wake while people nod at each other understandingly and rush to get out of my way.)
And I sort of stood there, opening and closing my mouth for a bit with no sound coming out. I wanted to explain; there was too much; I said nothing. The shop assistant promptly went off and came back with armfuls of the baby shampoo I had wanted, the one that was unavailable on the shelf (baby shampoo! I was buying baby products!) and asked me how many I would like. The ‘Best Actress Oscar’ must go to my friend, who, throughout all this, managed to keep a completely straight face.
So I paid for my cosmetics and my baby products ‘for my baby’, and got the hell out of there and went out for a huge coffee, making a mental note to burn the unflattering dress I had been wearing.
Then later that evening, I was going with a bunch of girls to see Wonder Woman. I was curious to see it because it had had some good press; some teacher had reported that girls in her class who went to see it came back super-empowered; one primary school girl was insisting on being called ‘Wonder Woman’, another one wanted to wear a Wonder Woman outfit and go round helping everybody; a grown-up female Twitter commenter noted that she too came away feeling incredible. ‘No wonder men feel so powerful all the time; they get to see all these superheroes who are all male!’… Sitting on a sunny terrasse and sipping wine, we all wondered what powers Wonder Woman has. ‘Wouldn’t it be great’, one friend said, ‘if actually all the gross things, like periods and rogue hair in weird places, were in fact superpowers?’ We all had fun imagining that the worst* bits of ourselves were actually a secret source of power. (*for ‘worst bits’, read: ‘perfectly normal things that go into being a woman, but which society isn’t so used to seeing yet’.)
And then we watched Wonder Woman.
I came away from all this and I found myself telling some friends about my day – my fake pregnancy story, and my impressions of Wonder Woman. And as I told the two stories, it occurred to me that maybe the two narratives go together. Maybe I don’t need to burn the dress, nor book that session with my personal trainer, nor start spending five hours each morning doing sit-ups. Maybe my ‘flaw’ is in fact a secret superpower, one which comes to my aid when I least expect it, and forms a protective bubble around me. Crowds part, seats become vacant, OAPs offer to carry my suitcase, shop assistants come to my aid and go to all kinds of trouble for me, aggressive punters melt away in deference, waitresses smile at me in cafes. And I have all the rights. J’ai tous les droits. I have all the powers. I am Wonder Woman.
So the dress got a stay of execution in the end; I am packing it away into a special box with all the other unflattering dresses which make me look preggers and which were previously destined for a ceremonial burning, because, as my super-practical Parisian friend said, ‘one day you might need them’.
