It doesn't take a genius to know that women and girls don't get taught everything we need to know at school or by our parents. A lot of us are out here just doing the best we can with what we've got and figuring it out along the way.
Many don't fully understand our own bodies, aren't fully comfortable with the politics of the workforce, and bless your heart if you're in a metropolitan area and nobody has taught you the official (and unofficial) rules of public transportation.
Don't stress. The sisterhood has your back.
Reddit user ej1273 asked:
"Women of Reddit, what’s something every girl should know but is rarely taught?"
Let's get our learning on, shall we?
Menopause?
Tv Land Crying GIF by Teachers on TV LandGiphy"Still waiting for someone to teach me about menopause."
- megablocklego
"Honestly don't know much about it either, but I do know this: If you start menopause and your period suddenly comes back, go see a doctor IMMEDIATELY."
- carinavet
"Going through it now."
"No one told me about the insomnia. The hot flashes drench my head. Oh and brain fog is real."
- tulipz10
"And no one seems to mention that it’s not a few months or maybe a year… I’ve been dealing with it for 4+ years."
"Absolutely ridiculous. I would like to speak to menopause’s manager!"
- megggie
Pockets
"Honestly, sewing and altering clothes- not for gendered reasons, but because our clothes often times fit irregularly."
"A size 12 in one brand will fit completely differently from a size 12 in a different brand."
"Also, you can learn to sew larger pockets into your pants."
- plvmeria
"Say no more. You had me at pockets."
- spamari
Discharge Discourse
"Your vaginal discharge is slightly acidic to help kill off bacteria."
"This is why your underwear may gradually get 'bleach' stains and little holes forming in the gusset."
- tinyspacewolves
"It causes light spots on dark fabric and dark spots on light fabric. Somehow, it knows."
- nameunconnected
"I get vaginal discharge every time my period is about to arrive."
"My ex thought I was unhygienic and went on Reddit about it. It hurt a lot knowing that I, at that time, was in love with him. Glad it’s over."
- craycrayanon
"It is COMPLETELY normal to have discharge."
"I was taught you should have no discharge. Ever. It made me feel disgusting every time I felt my undies get moist."
"I was reading today that some girls have harmed themselves over this because they think it means they are no longer clean or are impure."
"I make sure in all my sex Ed classes with high school girls to stress this fact."
- ShutterbugOwl
"I had no idea as a young teen that discharge was normal."
"So I assumed my underwear should be bone dry and spotless and something must be wrong with me that it wasn’t. This was likely connected to my then-recent discovery of masturbation, which I understood was a terrible sin and a disgusting thing for me to be doing."
"I saw an ad for Monistat that referred to discharge, and I decided I must have a yeast infection."
"So, being probably 12 years old, I shoplifted some home treatment because I assumed if I tried to buy it they’d tell my mom and she’d know why."
"And that’s how a total lack of decent sex ed led me to commit crimes and self-medicate imaginary yeast infections for a couple years."
- okschooner
Negotiation
Pay Me Stephen Colbert GIF by The Late Show With Stephen ColbertGiphy"How to negotiate a pay raise, higher salary, etc. Too many of us (girls and boys) are not taught how to advocate for ourselves and know our worth to employers."
- Pepperspray24
"THIS."
"Last time I was offered a promotion at a corporate job they were all 'oh boy! And you’ll get a $2 an hour raise!' ”
"I said I’d call them back shortly. Did the math. With the amount of commissions I got on top of my hourly they’d have to give me a $3 a raise just to match my average pay, not to mention the raise needed to cover my new responsibilities."
"I called back and told them as much, and said I’d take a $6 per hour raise to start and if the store numbers went up in the first month by 10% I’d take another $2 after 30 days, and we could renegotiate after 90 days of the promotion, depending on store numbers."
"They said they couldn’t do that, so I said I’d stay in my current position."
"They called back within five minutes and agreed. I said I’d wait on the paperwork confirming it and wouldn’t ya know it? It worked."
- ShinyTinker
A Second Opinion
"If a doctor quickly dismisses your extreme menstrual pain (or any type of pain for that matter) as being ‘normal’ or that you’re too ‘sensitive’, try to seek a second opinion."
"My ‘normal’ pain turned out to be endometriosis."
- BranwenTheRiveter
"My mom told me to suck it up, everyone hurts during their period. She thought taking ibuprofen kept my body from learning how to deal with discomfort."
"No, mom. It was stage 4 endometriosis. It was so bad my internal organs were fused together."
- reluctantsub
"Way back in dinosaur times, a doctor told my sister that period pain is God's punishment for women committing Original Sin, and there was nothing he could do to help her."
- NeutralFrog
Houseplants
"Thousands of companies exist with the sole purpose of making you feel insecure about some bullsh*t non-issue, then selling you a made-up 'solution'."
"Don't give these people your money. Acquire more houseplants instead."
- Articulated
"This here is solid gold."
"My houseplants make me so much happier than trying to conform to random bullsh*t standards for women ever did."
- Foxclaws42
A Plan, Not A Man
"Financial planning."
"You can’t and shouldn’t depend on Prince Charming to rescue you."
- macaronsforeveryone
"My grandma told me 'You don’t need a man to take care of you. You also don’t need a man you have to take care of.' ”
- erishilton
"As a Father to a daughter, I really tried to encourage my daughter to be financially independent and smart with her money."
- nadvargas
Lumps Aren't Always Cancer
"Lumps in your breasts are not always cancer!"
"Of course get them checked out, but it is COMMON to find cysts in your breasts! Some people also have naturally fibrous and kind of lumpy feeling breast tissue."
"Source: found a lump in my breast, freaked out, searched Google, freaked out more, stewed for months, booked an appointment with my Obgyn only for him to tell me 'yeah its a cyst, stop messing with it. It's common.' "
"Don't do that to yourself. Don't freak out. Don't stew for months."
- Jenyweny09
"It bothers me tons that there is no treatment other than 'live with it' as they become very painful."
"However, I really want to stress here, if you do find lumps in your breasts, go have them checked immediately, but don't freak out about it. It could be something, it could be nothing."
- yourMomDoesTricks
A Watering Can
"Lactating women do not have just one stream of breast milk that comes out of the middle part of the areola."
- Egg_Cellent
"Yup. It all looks a bit more like a watering can. You have multiple ducts where milk is released."
"Adding on to this, people need to understand a bit lore about the basics of human lactation. How it works, what is normal/abnormal, and where to reach out for help, and to do so the second you have questions."
"Lactation issues are much easier to correct the sooner you get help."
- nursepineapple
"I thought this when my son was born."
"He was four weeks premature and I was crying after the birth because my nipples didn’t have their hole yet. I was convinced it was because he was early and I wouldn’t be able to breast feed."
- ComprehensiveFlan638
"What the F!!!! I am 35, no kids (yet) and you are telling me my nipple turns into a WATERING CAN!!!???"
- holdingpotato
Do You Even Lift?
"Weightlifting and strength training is good for you, and more women should lift."
- kschin1
"No one accidentally wins Mr. Universe. The heavy weights aren't going to turn you into a hulk. You're not going to look 'manly' by accident."
- heili
"ADHD lady who loves weight lifting. Can confirm."
"Your brain goes quiet and you have such a sense of accomplishment being able to lift something you never thought was possible."
- infiniteambivalence
"It also won’t make you 'bulky'."
"It’s damn hard to build actual muscle, women don’t build muscle as quickly or as naturally as men do. For a woman to build a large amount of muscle takes time and precision with diet and progressive load training."
- RunRenee
"Exactly!! As a guy I’ve never understood this, women are something like 4 times more likely to develop osteoporosis or something because of bone density."
"So literally women have very good reason to lift more."
- GeneralKenobi4321
Now that you've heard from the lovely ladies of Reddit, it's your turn to talk.
What is something you think younger women and girls need to know as they grow up?
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Reddit user New-Low5765 asked:
"People who work in the airline industry, what are some of the craziest things you have seen?"
Don't Drink And Tow Aircraft
"Worked as ground crew. 2nd day on the job we were issued a notice to gather."
"So when you check in every morning you’re supposed to always take a breathalyzer test to prove you can like you know, ride around the tarmack, use pushbacks on planes, etc..."
"For whatever reason this dude hadn’t taken it/got past without taking it."
"He was not sober."
"He was tasked with pulling a 370 [aircraft] into a hangar."
"He eyeballed it for whatever reason."
"So here we are watching a video of this absolute loon break the whole wing off while damaging the hangar in the process."
"Because he was drunk, insurance doesn’t kick in."
"We were promptly told that Christmas bonuses might be a bit smaller."
~ ProbablyChe
Occupational Hazard
"Someone had the tip of their finger cut off when closing the door to the plane and didn't say anything until the flight landed at the arrival gate and when the door was opened the chunk of finger fell out."
"The staff then said, 'Oh yeah, that's my finger. you can throw it away'."
"I guess he just bandaged and wrapped his own hand."
"It was about 1/4 of his finger including the nail that was cut off. The cutoff portion wasn't particularly bloody and it was really pale."
~ If_I_remember
"A plane I got on once almost left without half of its aircrew on it."
~ BeerisAwesome01
"'Let’s just go, they can meet us there'."
~ InformativePenguin
"Plot twist. That included the pilots."
~ Windyandbreezy
Excess Baggage
"Coffin with dead body inside being left off the flight due to overload without notice either to us or the family and the family realising it by seeing it while the plane was leaving and screaming to us."
~ elenivog
employee of the month ups GIFGiphyNoped Out
"Saw the pilot walk into the passenger area and say 'I'm not flying this piece of sh*t' and get off the plane."
"All the passengers followed him."
~ Jaded-Session8422
"Hell yeah, I'm following the pilot off the plane if something like this happens!"
~ lukaron
Giphy"I had something similar happen, but never got on the plane."
"It was sitting there seemingly ready but they never started boarding."
"Eventually the pilots walk off the plane and a few of us heard them say ‘This junk isn’t going anywhere’."
"Flight ended up getting cancelled a short time later."
~ potatocross
"I was threatened with [pilots walking out] multiple times a week as an aircraft dispatcher."
"Auxiliary power units (APUs) run the air conditioning (AC) in the aircraft and they were always broken down and not fixed quickly, so when the pilots show up it is hot as hell inside and there's no ground crew to connect the external AC."
"So I would get a call from the Captain telling me he is not going to fly this piece of shit because it is too hot."
"Then they'd go on a tirade about how bad the company sucks because they don't do maintenance."
"I would agree with them completely."
Giphy"Then by the end of the call they'd say they will take it but the company sucks and needs to fix the APU."
"Occasionally the captain would refuse it, but then the ground crew would hook up the AC and they would always get back inside and fly it."
"For sure there were issues that popped up where the AC had an unsolvable issue and it would result in a cancelled flight."
~ Winchery
"I’m Dallas-Fort Worth based. No APU/AC in November? Meh, whatever."
"No APU/AC in August in Texas?"
"I’m not going on that airplane. Ground just can’t keep up."
~ poser765
☣️ Bio-Hazard ☣️
"Flight diverted to my airport because a girl in hotpants got uncontrollable diarrhea from the laxatives she took before the flight to help get over her weekend binge in Vegas."
"She sh*t in her seat and down the aisle and all over the bathroom."
"Five other passengers had uncontrollable vomiting because of this and the panic on the plane from the crew and rest of passengers caused the plane to make an emergency landing."
"They ended up having to cancel the remaining leg of the flight to decontaminate the plane."
"Police were sent and interviewed her and her friends and no charges were filed. I don't know if the airline put her on any kind of no-fly list or tried to have her pay for damages."
~ If_I_remember
GiphyHighly Unsuccessful
"There were two suitcases checked in that were full of nothing but weed."
"The police arrested him in the gating area & confiscated the bags."
~ Traditional_Pair4840
"Something similar happened when I was a ramp rat back in the 1960s."
"Law enforcement was going to do the arrest at his destination."
"The weed disappeared before they got there."
~ endadaroad
Stealthiest Catch
"As a baggage handler I once had a shipment of live Alaskan crabs escape their container on the ramp."
"Flights were delayed."
"Turns out those guys scatter when they panic and try to hide under anything and everything."
~ Gregwaaah
"My significant other worked doing maintenance checks on commercial planes."
"This explains why they once found a bunch of dead crabs under the floorboards in the cargo bay. It was a mysterious mystery."
~ Highly_Referential
Avoiding A Strip Search?
"A fully naked woman just walked through the terminal and tried to walk through security like she wasn’t fully naked."
~ Commercial-Chance561
"She was just very considerately trying to make it easier for TSA."
~ TrooperJohn
"They make you take off your shoes but they don't say that's all you can take off."
~ smartguy05
Language Barrier
"I witnessed this in the security screening of a large American airport."
"And to be fair, there was a language barrier as the passenger in question seemed to be speaking mainly French, and struggling to understand the TSA agent's instructions in English."
"Female passenger (tall, attractive, and sophisticated-looking) was wearing a business suit with a pencil skirt and matching jacket, which was buttoned closed, going through security."
"The TSA agent told her she had to remove the jacket. She ignored and tried to go through anyway."
"He stopped her and told her again more loudly (that's when everyone started noticing)."
"She said no. He insisted. She refused again, and tried to walk through."
Giphy"He got angry."
"She tried to explain something but it was unclear because her English was poor."
"It went back and forth."
"They both started getting angry and frustrated. It started holding up the line and other passengers were getting agitated."
"A few people tried to intervene and explain more calmly that she needed to put her jacket through the x-ray machine."
"Finally, near tears, she blurted out 'fine' and removed her jacket, revealing that she was wearing nothing at all underneath, and walked through the screening machine topless."
~ SigmaSeal66
I'm a nervous flyer so it's not something I do often, but I still feel a little cheated that nothing this bizarre has happened while I was traveling.
Has something ever happened during your travels?
Share it in the comments.
A good friend is not always the one with whom you share laughs and fun experiences.
The friendships you want to keep include those who won't abandon you in a time of need or someone who supports you in a variety of complicated situations where not even a family member can be relied upon.
Unfortunately, many of us have experienced a time when a person's true colors revealed to us that the so-called "friend" we've always trusted wasn't one at all.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor Aesthetik_1 asked:
"What made you instantly realize This 'friend' is not a real friend?"
These Redditors didn't realized at the time that they were being used.
Recurring Favor
"When he only called me when he needed something. It didn't hit me until much later."
– Queasy-Location-9303
"I have one of those 'friends'. She always gushes about how we're friends but she never initiates contact unless she wants me to do something for her."
– StiffAssedBrit
The Errand Girl
"Several years back, I had a friend who introduced me to this new boy she was seeing. Maybe a year later, their relationship blew up in a fury of bs (whole other story), but by the time they split, I was equally friends with both of them. He and I were both photographers at the time, so the friendship was instantaneous."
"One day we started talking about her, neither positively nor in poor taste, just kind of in general."
"He then asked me 'when she texts to hang out, what does she usually want to do?'"
"I paused. I thought. Holy sh*t, she'd either be asking for a favour or for help with some kind of errand. I was her f'king errand girl."
"She texted me a month or two later, just a 'hey'. I never responded. She never texted again."
"I'm still friends with her ex, though. That dude is genuine as heck."
– ChamomileBrownies
Testing The Friendship
"When you decide to let them be the one to reach out. And you never hear from them again."
– plzdontgetmad
"Yup. Made plans with a friend three times, she cancelled each time. I finally told her to let me know when she was free, we haven’t hung out since."
"She was a good friend for the season, but not a lifetime."
– NoMrBond3
People were shocked to discover the moment they realized they didn't really know who their "friend" was anymore.
The Chaperon
"I had been giving rides to a girl I thought was my friend. To and from school in high school. She wasn’t really suppose to ride with other teens but due to her mothers work hours we could easily pull this off. I thought we were close."
"One day while on the way home my brakes went out. We were about 2 blocks from her gated neighborhood. I managed to roll in safely and parked at her house to call a tow truck."
"She flipped. Told me I couldn’t stay. She knew my brakes were not working as she had also been terrified when we couldn’t stop. She said she wanted to go to a movie that weekend with other friends and her mom would ground her if she saw me at the house. I offered to lie and say I only stopped there as my car malfunctioned on my way home. I had to pass her neighborhood on my way home anyways."
"She refused. Started to scream at me. She didn’t care what happened I had to go. Started to call the guard at the front gate to tell them I had broken in and was threatening her."
"I left her and that friendship that moment. I managed to roll my car slowly to a mechanic not too far away but never forgot the shi* feeling of knowing I could have been seriously hurt and she wouldn’t have cared. She wanted to see a movie. She had the nerve to sheepishly call and ask me a couple days later if I could give her a ride to school. Told her I was too busy and no longer had time… after all I wanted to help her obey her mom's rules. She rode the bus til she graduated."
– Duffarum
Unwilling Companion
"I had this friend in school. Each year there was a funfair in our city, all students received vouchers for a drink and something to eat. This friend complained the whole day that she had no one to accompany her to the funfair. So, stupid me offered to go with her."
"Once we arrived we met another friend of hers. And another, and another... until we were a group of 5 or 6 people. I didn't know anyone and was basically just walking behind them. This friend took me aside and said, 'My friends think you are annoying, and we would like you to leave.'"
"It was a pleasure to see that she failed her exams a year later."
– Auldale
There's the spirit of competition, but when it's taken seriously, we're no longer game for these friendships.
I Can Do It Better
"Constantly 'one ups' me. A real friend is happy for you."
– Complex-Half8338
"That one time I got a fake bag but she doesn’t know and then 2 weeks later messaged me that she also bought a luxury bag… Then when I got a bf, she also went to get a bf within 3 months which is TOTALLY fine but she constantly messages me for us to go on a double date. Anyways, sadly they didn’t last long :( I mentioned that I wanted to go to Cuba, she went ahead and bought herself a ticket to Cuba but I didn’t end up going lol"
– Hot-Coffee-8465
Never Steal The Spotlight
"When they loved the idea of me shining, but behind their shadow, I could never do or achieve anything above them, and when I did, they would get jealous."
– Jasssin23
"Yes! I recently ghosted a friend because of this kind of behavior. She was trying to compete about EVERYTHING. Like she bragged about how her mom’s car accident was more traumatic than my elderly MIL’s - which is not even an appropriate thing to compare. She would also try to 'outshine' celebrations of my milestones and was mean to several of my friends for no apparent reason. She was a loose cannon at best."
– thefifthtrilogy
All About Me
"ALL she talks about it herself and her problems. Granted she has a a lot but never asks about me or my life until she realizes she just bypassed my attempt to want to talk about something in my life bothering me and continued to talk about herself."
– PokemomOnTheGo
People can just be so rude.
"When I got really sick. Very few came to help."
– Tofflus1
"Same here. I got cancer and everyone I knew was over the top supportive for the first six months and then all but three of my friends just vanished. I saw one of them at a Halloween party while I was going through chemo and she told me that my bald head made people uncomfortable. I was dressed as Captain Picard, it was awesome and she ruined it."
– CatGoNoTail
Not Missing High School
"At lunch, she was sitting with her boyfriend, I was sitting with our friend circle. She came up to me, guilted me into sitting with her and her boyfriend, and then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of lunch."
"She didn't care about me, she just didn't want me talking to the friend circle that she had abandoned for her boyfriend. When I pointed this out to her, she called me a jealous b*tch."
"Ah, high school. How I don't miss thee."
– Symnestra
These examples actually served as a good reminder for me to take a moment and assess my friendships.
Not so much about how I've been treated but more about checking myself to see if I'm respecting the people I call my friends.
We've all been guilty of casually mentioning future plans to get together. I embarrassingly wait for people to initiate something, which is terrible.
Show up for your friends. Make them feel important like the individuals they are.