1.  It’s Friday, it’s Friday, let’s all say yay for Friiiiiiiidaaayyyyyyy.

2.  Please tell me you sang that.

3.  I sang it as I typed it.

4.  I hope you added your own pizzazz.

5.  Maybe some jazz hands for flare.

6.  I’m doing the bunion surgery thing today and I’m oh so excited.

7.  Excited for my foot to stop hurting anyway.

8.  Fun backstory: I had bunion surgery on my right foot almost thirty years ago.

9.  That’s right, cats and dolls, I got that bunion handled in what kids are calling the late 20th century.

10.  At the time I worked for a *very* old-school company that required women to wear skirts/dresses, pantyhose, and heels.

11.  I think I just heard the younger generations’ collective heads explode. It was bananas, I KNOW.

12.  I made it about six months before experiencing crippling pain in my right foot whenever I tried something earth shattering like, say, walking across a room.

13.  I muddled through for a minute then said hell nah and took care of business.

14.  Was it fun? Absolutely not.

15.  Was it great to be able to walk again? Yep.

16.  So now my left foot’s up to bat.

17.  Back in my thirties I was talking to this guy at a function. He was someone I knew through the company but we weren’t close.

18.  Because I’m fabulous at small talk I casually mentioned my bunion surgery and you know what he said?

19.  I bet you know what he said.

20.  “I wouldn’t tell people that, you sound OLD.”

21.  Mmm-hmm.

22.  Thirty-something me smiled tightly then laughed uncomfortably.

23.  I could feel myself practically disintegrate into crypt dust before his gaze.

24.  That was then. I’ve entered my Zero Fucks To Give Era™ and have some thoughts.

25.  Is silently suffering through crippling pain so they can look pretty something men tend to do?

26.  Because — and I’m just spitballing here — men market themselves as problem solvers. See it, fix it energy.

27.  I had a problem and fixed it.

28.  It’s not lost on me that I fixed it so I could uphold the “be pretty” requirement for my job but that’s a battle for another day.

29.  Except his comment wasn’t so much critical of the surgery as critical of me for mentioning it because I don’t want to look old, right?

30.  Because looking youthful and pretty and uncomplicated is my goal, right??

31.  Listen, I’m not gonna pretend I haven’t been steeped in patriarchy for my whole life so of course that was my goal.

32.  Except a bunion isn’t an old people thing, it’s a foot deformity.

33.  And surgery to correct isn’t a dirty secret to hide away, it can be a necessary medical procedure.

34.  “Geez, Laura, he was just joking.”

35.  First of all, no he wasn’t. Bunion surgery made me ancient to him.

36.  But the bigger question is why was he so sure I should care if other people see me as effortlessly young, pretty, and desirable?

37.  That was rhetorical. If there’s something women as a whole know down to their bones it’s that people believe we’re born to please others.

38.  Meaning everything from looking pretty to being gracious to taking up less space so we can help those around us succeed.

39.  I’m not certain men are prepared for what they’ve unleashed here. I’m seeing a lot of people, women in particular, talk about not just refusing to go back but demanding to move forward.

40.  Things are about to get uncomfortable. Go forth and smash the patriarchy in all its forms.