The Worst Kind of Cinderella Story

A Roe v. Wade re-telling (of a re-telling)

When I used to hear people talking about history repeating itself, I thought they were speaking of it happening on a generational timeline, not the minute we no longer had a pumpkin dumpling running the country. Joke’s on me I guess.

I read Alexandra Petri’s opinion piece for the Washington Post, where she equates the potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, to a woman turning back into a vessel. I’m not a stranger to essays written in the third person. However, what stood out to me the most in this piece was the use of the word “vessel”. Something about it sparked a visceral reaction. A reminder, perhaps, of that one Greek mythology class I took in college, where we discussed how women were treated as nothing more than vessels for (preferably male) children.

My brain — being the wonderland that it is — decided to run with it. “What if you took that statement literally? If women are vessels in all the ways that matter, being literal isn’t that far of a jump.”

I love satire. In considering Ms. Petri’s piece, I found myself wondering, “Can you push satire into the absurd and have it still hold?” There was only one way to find out.