“‘You can’t sit on cold things or you’ll freeze your ovaries!’

This is something they say in Bulgaria, though they also say it in Russia, so maybe it’s an eastern European thing. People mainly say it to girls for obvious reasons; I guess it’s to make sure that we can still have babies later on.”

It’s interesting that there isn’t a male equivalent to this proverb; this means that the concepts of fertility and childbearing lie solely on the woman. Traditional Bulgarian society was largely patriarchal, so this follows the beliefs of many traditional societies that the only responsibilities that the woman has are to bear the husband’s children and to keep house. Therefore, this proverb is repeated even to younger girls, so that they will grow up already knowing what their main purpose is.