It occurred to me the other day, while putting on my contact lenses and blow drying my hair, that had I not been born in the latter half of the 20th century, I would probably be dead. If not dead, then disfigured. If not disfigured, then exhausted. And if not exhausted, then quite spectacularly unattractive. I am alive and well thanks to the following (and this is by no means a complete list):
Vaccines, penicillin, corrective lenses, orthodontics, birth control, decent hair products, surgical childbirth, chemotherapy, radiation, cosmetic surgery, the women’s liberation movement, the microprocessor, the internet, the food processor, the cell phone, and central vacuuming.
To name a few.
Although I have been known to say that I can’t live without my black Hugo Boss riding boots, chances are that my life was in fact saved by Sir Alexander Fleming, who failed to tidy up his lab when he went on vacation one summer, and came back to discover a mould that, 40 years later, prevented me from dying of scarlet fever.
Had physiologist Gregory Pincus not been messing around with inedible Mexican yams, and had he not met birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger at a dinner party, he might not have come up with a contraceptive that later became known as The Pill. And I would have had 12 children, like my grandmother. Actually, I would barely have had one. Without Julius Caesar’s ancestors, and a German obstetrician named Max Saenger who figured out how to save the mother along with the baby (and the bathwater), John and Aidan would be batching it on their own.
Without advances in technology, I would not be able to do the job that I do. I suppose I could broadcast the farm report with a bullhorn, but not likely. Without the changes in attitude towards women in the workplace, I would not be invited to do the job that I do. (Why did the woman cross the road? It doesn’t matter - why was she out of the kitchen in the first place?).
I am a reasonably attractive woman, who, on good days, gets mistaken for Sharon Stone or Annie Lennox, but, if the truth be told, has grey hair, crooked teeth, myopia and a deviated septum. Here, but for the grace of God, Dr. Metaxas and Botox, go I:
Nuff said.