Lesser known facts when writing women:
- High heeled shoes don’t become flats if you break the heels off.
- The posts of earrings aren’t sharp.
- Nail polish takes a long time to dry and smudges when wet.
- You can’t hold in a period like pee.
- Inserting a tampon is not arousing or sexual in any way, ever.
Feel free to add your own.
– Bras leave red marks on the skin under and around boobs and it is a magical experience when taken off.
– Make up can take anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes depending on how skilled you are.
– Taking hair out of a ponytail after wearing it for hours does not make it perfectly straight when it comes down.
– Hair when wet sticks to the skin it no longer flows, idiot.
-When women with long hair kiss, turn around, do anything, their hair falls in the way.
– Stockings are itchy and tear like wet paper bags.
– Pantyhose, tights, leggings, and stockings are each different.
– Waxing hurts and leaves red skin for a while afterwards while shaving leaves stubble
– Most can’t run in heels unless they have been VERY worn
– Insecurity in appearance doesn’t mean “buy me a drink”
– EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT TASTES IN EVERYTHING
-Having large breasts sucks. It sucks beyond belief. If a garment happens to fit your large chest, odds are it won’t fit the rest of you. Underboob sweat is real and terrible. Bending over for extended periods of time will tweak your back out. Running can be painful due to boob turbulence. Bras are hella expensive. Big breasts are not fun.
Putting a tampon in isnt a quick bend-poke-done kinda deal. It involves cubicle yoga, messy hands, numerous curse words as you realise it isnt in correctly and have to take it out and start again with a new one.
Yes to all of this. But also:
If her hair is in an updo, one does not simply remove a hairpin to send her hair cascading down her back. No. If her hair is an updo, it will take at least an hour and an extra set of hands to remove the 137 bobby pins that are holding her hair in place. Furthermore, there’s probably a can’s worth of hairspray in there, intended to withstand category 2 hurricane winds. There’s no cascading happening here – the best you can hope for is a misshapen nest of hair to clump and poof unattractively in the back while it still remains flat against her scalp.
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve seen in a while (especially if you read all the comments), but also really depressing because at 42 I still judge myself as having failed for not matching up to all these mythical stereotypes despite knowing they’re impossible
^^^This though
The odds of a woman having smoothly shaved legs and armpits are directly proportional to the amount of skin her clothing bares and/or the amount of fucks she gives at that particular moment.
GLASSES ARE NOT COSMETIC. If we whip them off, we do not become gorgeous fashion models. We become squinty.
-most women wear bras. Yes, even when they are trying to dress sexy. Because bras make boobs look perkier and rounder, which is something men apparently find sexy, so being a seductress or femme fatale is not an automatic reason for a female character to not be wearing a bra.
-a good bra will hide headlights, or at the very least drastically reduce their noticeability. A women with enough pointy nipple issues will opt for a padded or molded bra to hide them.
-women’s nipples do not automatically become hard pyramids visible through any and all layers of clothing the second they become even slightly aroused. They are not the female equivalent of boners. And even if their nipples do get hard, the bras they are almost certainly wearing (because even a goddamn succubus with big, honkin’ knockers for seducing men is gonna have those painful puppies in some kind of boob sling) should keep those pointy nipples from being visible to every other character in the scene, JIM BUTCHER. YES, EVEN LARA RAITH WOULD WEAR A BRA ONCE IN A GODDAMN WHILE.
- if you’re being tied up and tortured in a freezing underground dungeon, then you probably have more important things to pay attention to than how hard somebody’s nipples are, jim butcher
– Wearing a bra that doesn’t fit HURTS. It’s not sexy to wear a bra that’s “two sizes too small”, it’d make your clothes hang oddly and you’d have a weird, uncomfortable “quad-boob” effect and your back would hurt, BEN AARONOVITCH.
With the heeled shoes, as proof that they don’t become flats if you remove the heel there are people who make digitrigrade hooves, paws, and talons using high heeled shoes sans the heel as a base. And they work. Spectacularly well.
Stockings/tights are annoying as fuck.
Bras are not only essential, particularly for larger sizes (because that can be anywhere from 5-20 pounds of weight just hanging there which is painful and tiring), but they also determine how a shirt or dress fits. Or if it fits at all.
Reasons women take longer in public restrooms, there are actually fewer stalls or equivalent. Seriously. That’s it. That’s why we have lines. Urinals take up less room so there at least two for every stall place. Three if they have larger stalls.
Reasons women will go in groups, it’s not because it’s social hour for girls. It’s legit for our own safety. The more squicked out we are, the more likely it is that we’re going to avoid going anywhere alone.
Actually peeing. It doesn’t just dribble out because we sit (yes, I’ve had to explain this). The whole bladder, muscles, pressure thing all works the same way.
Yes breaking a nail is annoying. Reasons why, now you have this sharp, jagged thing that catches on EVERYTHING or for the truly lucky it broke below the quick which fucking hurts. And it still catches on everything.
Periods can vary from mildly annoying to so painful we should be in the hospital. Some women do have cramps that are straight up worse than actual labor. And most of us will do our damndest to grit our teeth and carry on anyway.
Due to the whole period thing not only is a woman likely to have a way higher pain tolerance than you expect, we’re also way less likely to be phased by blood than movies make out. And we tend to know exactly how to best clean blood off anything.
That kissing to get a girl to stop talking? Not amusing. Not sexy. You’ve just added yourself to the list of men to be avoided. Congrats.
Fashion isn’t something we “just know”, it’s a skill set based on the fact that very very few stores have equivalent measurements for sizes and even then, different cuts of clothing hang differently, so we often literally don’t know until we try something on how well it will fit or if it will fit everywhere. That’s why clothes shopping takes ages. Not because we’re admiring ourselves in the mirror.
Not every woman wears makeup, but even those that don’t habitually wear it will probably know a few tricks.
Lesbians and women who work with their hands cut their fingernails short. You will not meet a serious gardener or potter or pianist with long acrylic nails. Doctors and nurses and allied health workers who wear latex gloves often same story.
Even if we own both parts of the matching underwear doesn’t mean we’ll wear them together. Comfy bras might be worn a few days in a row before washing.
Most women aren’t tough “because they had brothers”, they’re tough because they needed to be.
Clothes without pockets are annoying but handbags contain multitudes. Do not underestimate the handbag.
In harsh environments like post-apocalyptic wastelands makeup and personal grooming will fall down the priorities list.
If we’re thinking about how our boobs are moving in a dress, it’s only because we’re concerned they’re about to pop out of it.
Dear Men Writers
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