Happy International Women’s Day! We love being women. BPES has given us a unique look and that only increases how fun it can be to be a woman with BPES. We’ve hinted at some of these topics on other pages on the site, but I thought I would bring them all together in a post centered around being a woman in honor of International Women’s Day.

Our BPES is based on a genetic mutation that happened when our great grandmother came down with pneumonia during her pregnancy. Between her illness and the treatment, this had an adverse affect on the fetus, leading to our telltale “trademark” as our father calls it – small teddy bear eyes. Or so the family urban legend goes. Our grandfather had “the eyes” and this was passed down to his children. Only the males in the family were born with BPES and not all of them had this condition. It created an interesting divide at times in my father’s family between those siblings who had this condition and those who did not. My family assumed it was a sex linked trait as only male children had the small eyes.

All that changed when my big sister was born.

She had small eyes, disproving the theory that this was a sex linked trait. Both my sister and I have BPES. We were always special as the only females in the family with this condition. A bit later our cousin was born with BPES as well. For me it is a special bond because so few of us have this condition. Now my brother’s youngest daughter joins our ranks. It’s fun to have a small group who understand things like the annoyance of figuring out how and if to use eye liner (although that is some years away for my brother’s daughter!) or just having to deal with dating men who don’t get your look.

Women define their own sense of self, femininity, and womanhood in different ways. Many bring childbearing into the equation of being a woman. For me as a woman with BPES, I am not bothered that I most likely can’t have kids. The infertility component of BPES doesn’t impact my sense of my own womanhood in any way. I feel like a complete woman (and then some!) even though I most likely can’t have kids. The infertility aspect of BPES is like water off a duck’s back for me. No big deal and doesn’t make me feel incomplete that I can’t bring life into this world. Everyone is on their own journey of course and others certainly could feel differently. I respect that.

BPES certainly impacts my overall identity. For me, it just rolls into my overall sense of self, which is strongly grounded in the fact that I am a woman. Riffing off of my sister’s post from last week, my condition does not define me. Hehe, a little tongue in cheek because as much as we dissect it here on the website, our condition doesn’t really impact our quality of life or inhibit us in any real way. We are fierce, strong, confident, sensual women, who happen to have small eyes. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Who run the world?