In which halfwomanhalfbadger decides the world is madder than a bucket of monkeys on mescaline in a blender

WHAT!!!! WHAT!!!! WHAT!!!!

Golly, I end up talking about boobs quite often, don't I?

One of those "Mate, you are clearly having a giraffe" moments...

I read this...

Now Angelina Jolie is a bit of a divisive figure for some people, but not for me. She is an incredible advocate for victims of sexual violence in Africa for the UN and truly does use her fame to the benefit of the disenfranchised. She also seems pretty determined to dance to the beat of her own drum.

I like that in a person.

Her openness about her decision to have a double mastectomy is brilliant. My ghast is also truly flabbered that she worked through all this without a word to anybody.

What irks me are comments like this one...

love to Angelina, but if the cure to breast cancer is that woman have to get their breasts removed before they get cancer, we are in trouble

Where do I start?

An individual woman with a "highly-unlikely-to-not-be-life-threatening" gene mutation decides to have a radical procedure that will (unless she's hit by a bus mid op...) improve her life expectancy. The writers' assumption with this statement is that we're all going to start cutting our norks off willy-nilly because we're frightened of getting cancer. An 87% risk of developing breast cancer is a pretty compelling  reason to have a mastectomy.

(See also "Why do women have preventative surgery?" - I'm looking at you, HuffPo).

The wimmins are not a homogenous mass, solely defined by hair colour, "hotness" and breast size. Please get this into your pathetic noggin.

There is nothing whimsical about making the decision to have a double mastectomy.  The BRCA gene test was only made more widely available in the last 7 or 8 years, and this discovery offers a real life line to families whose mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers and aunts have died at far too young an age, or lived under the threat of a early painful death. Good treatments for diseases don't exactly fall fully formed from the sky. I once knew someone who had a full mastectomy and reconstruction aged 21, after being diagnosed with breast cancer. I think she'd rather have been on the lash, don't you?

I mean, what can be more selfish that not wanting your family (and children if you have them) to see you dying slowly and far too soon? And not living in fear that one day you're going to find a lump when you're idly showering? Having to tell your kid that, you're very sick, or that you are going to die?

Personally, I'd take the op. The ladies aren't having the boobies cut off to upset you, capiche?

*Previous breasty ruminations can found here...

Bodies - duffed and otherwise (Caution - Sweary)

I need to stop reading anything sleb-gossip related on the grounds that I go all goggle-eyed and dyspeptic with fury.

Here's why....

Celebrity Pregnancy

When a woman in the public eye is pregnant, I quite like to hear about it because I'm nosy and always up for displacement activity. (Explains certain "delays" in my education and career, does that...*cough*) Anyhow....what does make me want to shut myself in a cupboard away from all of the sharp objects for an hour or so, are the following phrases - "hiding her baby bump" or "showing off/flaunting her baby bump". I've blogged about the misuse of flaunt as terminology before http://partwomanpartbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/things-that-irritate-me-about-daily.html but they never seem to learn.

Let's explore the actual interpretations based on actual circumstances, shall we? And not on the tenuous projection that all women with a public profile are constantly squirming with either a) shame about "their condition" or b) are in a froth of sexual excitement and showing off for the mens.

Hiding her baby bump (ACTUAL MEANINGS)

A. "Is wearing a coat because it's fucking cold"
B. "Boobs are two moons in a hammock thus distracting attention"
C. "Due to point B, clothing hangs from norks acting like a bump curtain"
D. "Comfort (due to being effing pregnant and as a consequence, always hot - not a la Paris Hilton before you ask)"
E. "It might give someone pause before they try to shove a long lensed camera up ones jacksie"
F. "Might keep the touchy-touchy brigade at bay"

Showing off her baby bump (ACTUAL MEANINGS)

A. "Might just be really happy about being pregnant"
B. "Is in a hot tropical country and is wearing a bikini - because it's fucking hot"
C. "Later stages of pregnancy mean that you (proportionally) have a much shorter reach than you have before so fastening stuff is an ask"
D. "Can't be arsed to keep hiding it"
E. "Please see "hiding - option D"
F. "Due to being the shape of a hot air balloon with apendages, the only way you could hide it was if you wore a barrel"

Oh FFs, it's not fucking magic.

65 days and counting...*gulp*

Regrettably today is the day when the shizz gets real and I have to attempt to achieve a level of fitness before going skiing in 65 days time.

To that end, I've just joined myfitnesspal.com.

I've not been able to exercise properly since about July 2011 when pelvic girdle pain/SPD put paid to me having a nice active pregnancy and eventually put me on crutches for 4 months. Not forgetting getting pushed around Ikea in a wheelchair - now that was an experience. Not one I particularly want to repeat.

To add insult to injury, I had a C-section, the recovery was a bit arduous and extended and I have a  couple of other knackered parts that mean I have to exercise a bit of discretion. So chucking myself off a French Alp makes perfect sense. If you're bloody minded with a flagrant disregard for one's own physical well-being that is.

If losing weight is a side effect, great, plus I'd like to stop my chest's attempt at world domination in it's tracks if at all possible. I am Miss September in the 2013 Miss Unruly Norks Calendar at the moment.

Allons-y!

Says she, chomping on a cracker smothered in black pepper Boursin...

(Edited because I can't add up)

*All opinions and comments made in this blog are mine and I am in no way affiliated with myfitnesspal or any other company*

Duffed no more: Fancy a (another) spoonful of boob related guilt?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20406743

I actually don't object to the thrust of the research behind this article and breastfeeding (when it goes well) is great and a lovely experience for mother and baby as well as all the health benefits is something of a no-brainer. Yada, yada, yada...Though for quite a lot of new mothers, it's utterly crap.  I was lucky for a bit and then I wasn't. Funnily enough though, Mini D strangely got healthier after a little formula came on board.  Also for the record, I think we've already established that I belong to the "Whatever works for you" school of parenting so be kind enough not to start wibbling on about "Breast is best". Yes, we know. However as I've said in the past, formula is not arse trimmings, brick dust and raw sewage in lard either.

HOWEVER what creates involuntary bladder frothing (and clearly not in a good way) is this:

Common reasons for stopping breastfeeding were problems with the baby rejecting the breast or not latching on properly, having painful breasts or nipples and feeling that they had 'insufficient milk'.

It's the "feeling that they had 'insufficient milk'" comment is the one that troubles me.

Sometimes it's not just a feeling. Insufficient milk is a fact. It happened to me and Mini Chunk. If I'd persisted, he'd have been Mini Twig.  The primary and most natural way to get your milk back is to spend several days doing skin-to-skin contact (which is lovely stuff but not always entirely practical) and if you're tired, depressed, achy or in big pain and with a child who is screaming their metaphorical bollocks off because they are slowing starving, being sequestered semi-naked in a theoretically 'calm' environment might actually be the thing that drives you finally and irrevocably around the fucking twist.

Being a new parent is hard enough without being encouraged into a situation that's going to send you all The Yellow Wallpaper.

Being a new parent is also hard enough without having the media telling the world that you are/you have been a shirker or a let down. Remember that this stuff is all "ideal world" and you've done your best x

Duffed - Boobs

Things about boobs that had never occurred to me before I embarked on this little adventure...

• No matter how big your boobs are under normal circumstances, pregnancy will make them much bigger. You will be able to cut the cups out and wear them on your head in cold weather with no difficulty whatsoever. In fact, stitch on a nicely colour co-ordinated pom-pom and it'll look like someone brought it back as a gift for you from a nice ski-ing jaunt in Val d'Isere. You'll also find that the sizing variations mean that, from the beginning to end of your pregnancy, you'll be able to kit out the entire family, including the one person everyone secretly calls "Football heed". Or at least you would do if everything didn't come in white, greige and black. I know that most of the time, all one cares about is that the damn things are tamed, but pretty and not the cost of a Bentley would be good.
• If you felt mildly discomfited by the people who would stare at your breasts before this takes place, now you are permanently sober and at times, a touch "feisty", wearing the cardboard box that your fridge came in or, if you feeling a little more bohemian, a yurt, has never been more appealing. As does wearing a t-shirt that says "Oi! I've got a ****ing face! Look at that! Tw*t!"
• They cease to be "Fun" bags and become slightly itchy "Ouch" bags. In fact, should you ever have been curious about how you get warm fleshy cannon balls into an extremely utilitarian and aesthetically unappealing elasticated hammock, now's your chance. What previously was an inconvenience is now a trial. Lying on your front? Ha! Suddenly crossing one arm across your body without thinking? Bad idea. very, very, bad idea. Sleeping free range? Not a cat in hell's chance. You will now own bras for sleeping, waking, nursing and sport. And several other sets of circumstances that currently elude me.
• You are permanently pointy as though you've been standing the chiller isle of Tesco's for a bit too long.
• Likelihood of being defeated by gravity and falling flat on your face due to sheer weight of the darn things increases by the power of ten. Coupled with general normal levels of clumsiness and yes, it's fair to say, I'm going to spend the following months rocking on my front like a tortoise that's been rolled or in a heap after executing a perfect commando roll to prevent injuring bump.
• The sheer bewildering range of things, products and advice relating to sucking out and manual or electrical extraction of, mopping up of excess, general containment and control of all things breasty and milky.