OPINION: Russian leader Vladimir Putin does not have bad days "because I'm not a woman" according to filmmaker Oliver Stone, who has been following the guy around for the past two years for a documentary.
According to the Guardian, when Stone asked Putin during a tour of the Kremlin if he ever had bad days, Putin said being a man meant he did not have to worry about this. "I am not a woman, so I don't have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That's just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles."
Part of me wants to feel grateful that Putin has noticed these things. Most men prefer to ignore the fact that women spend the better part of each month navigating the highs and lows of the certain hormonal and physical turmoil which accompanies their natural fertility cycle.
But the other part of me knows better. Just as Trump suggested that Fox news anchor Megyn Kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever" after she gave him a bit of a hard time during an election debate, Putin is simply pushing home the common belief that women are a bit unstable and weak - especially when the painters are in.
I've never met a woman who enjoys the fact that we must turn up at work and perform equally as well as our male counterparts even though we are the ones downing painkillers, making emergency trips to the loo and wondering what fresh hell has arrived this month.
And that's just when it's shark week. The week before there are the raging hormones, the week after sheer exhaustion and the other week, well that's when we do all the washing.
So we sit at our desks while our male colleagues enjoy the surety that every day they will wake up and feel normal. Just the same as yesterday and the day before, no stomach cramps, no hot flushes (that's in there for menopausal women), nothing seeping out of anywhere requiring mopping up with a product we pay good money for including tax to the Government. No extra effort required, just press start and the body will function exactly as it did yesterday. Except when he gets man flu.
And what does that do to us? Well it makes us stronger, Putin and Trump. It makes us able to cope with just about anything that happens in our day because we've always had to adjust, recalibrate, move on, finish the deal. Just as we have since most of us were 12 years old.
So we don't have bad days either, we just have days of wonder at our remarkable ability to once again keep our end up and cope.
Wendyl Nissen is an experienced magazine and television journalist, and will host RadioLIVE's Afternoon Talk, weekdays from midday until 3pm, from Monday June 26.
