Walk a mile in a feminist’s shoes and your feet will hurt. Especially if that feminist is me. (I have gout in my big toe.)
Close your eyes and imagine gout for me. Okay, open them, since you need open eyes to keep reading.. What did you imagine? Did you imagine an incredibly disgusting and ugly old man? Does he have skin tags and, if you went to his house, his windows would be covered in newspaper?
Now imagine me. Hot, beautiful, sexy, etc.. This is the new face of gout worldwide.
When I got gout last year, I was shocked. Why me?! The old men in my family have had gout for generations, so I assumed my boy cousin was a shoe in (ha ha) to carry on the family business of having gout. But I guess God is a woman and she has gout because by some miracle, I became the first ever woman in the family to get really achy toe joints when I drink red wine. I thought it could never happen to a regular sweet girl like me, but if I’ve learned anything from gout, it’s that anything is possible if you follow your passions.
And I discovered I am not the first trailblazing woman to have gout. Eleanor Roosevelt. Rosa Luxemburg. Amelia Earhart. They all had gout. See? You can literally just say things like this and a newspaper will print it.
Gout taught me to speak up, to believe in myself, to lean in! (Sometimes leaning actually agitates my big toe gout.) I know gout isn’t contagious, but if I could give gout to every little girl in the world, I would. Because goutless women seldom make history.