1. Periods
They’re the Holy Grail of all female issues. We can beg, we can pray and we can wish it upon them in every way possible, but men will never experience a throbbing, shedding uterus. Girls bleed for a week straight every month for 40 years or so and they get no recognition. There aren’t even any superheroes who do that. On another note, we have to buy tampons and pads every month. The worst part? We have no choice but to buy them. Guys don’t have to budget Tampax and Midol into their monthly spending plan.
2. Visible panty lines
There’s no in-between for girls–we either have a permanent wedgie or VPL (visible panty lines) detectable from a 10-mile radius. Guys wear full-blown shorts as underwear and you can’t even tell, but we girls slip on a pair of Barely There Underwear and we still need to call in border patrol to control the panty lines. Thongs? Sometimes we don’t want something (literally) stuck up our butt all day. Can’t a girl just wear her granny panties in peace? Since when did our panty of choice become such a domineering part of our life?
3. Hair catastrophes
There are few things in this world that make a girl’s heart stop quicker than that dreaded moment when “just a trim” turns into three inches chopped off. Sure, guys can get bad haircuts, but three weeks later, they’re back to normal. Mix a terrible haircut with a bad hair day and we’re left with a Joe Dirt mullet and buckets of tears. On another note, guys never have to worry about leaving the house with messy hair. If we sleep through our alarm, we risk going into public with that Joe Dirt mullet, greasy and stuffed under a baseball cap. We can try teasing it, dry-shampooing it and throwing it up in a sock bun, but sometimes there’s just no saving bad hair.
4. Endless grooming
Legs, armpits, eyebrows, the Land Down Under–you name it, we groom it. Men have an entire month dedicated to completely neglecting their grooming, but women skip one leg shave and suddenly we’re some grizzly creatures. Do guys realize how expensive razor heads are? We practically have to take out an extra student loan to maintain silky-smooth legs.
5. Beauty routines
Shampooing, conditioning, shaving, moisturizing, hair-drying, hair-straightening, makeup, picking out an outfit, hating the outfit, picking out another outfit, realizing we put on too much bronzer, re-straightening our hair because we started sweating from running around trying to get ready on time… it never ends. Five minutes and a bottle of 99-cent hair gel, and guys are ready to face the day. Someone please explain how this is fair.
6. Bras
Bra shopping is like car shopping. We try seven different models, and once we choose one that fits, we have 60 different colors to pick from. Then, after an hour of trying to choose one, we realize that the one we actually like gives us back fat and cone boobs, so it’s back to square one. Do we even dare mention having to wear a lacey, wired contraption strapped to our chest all day? Boys, you don’t know the first thing about being uncomfortable until you sport one of those bad boys every day for your entire life. BTW, we named the day in which girls have to cross over from training bras to cup bras. It’s now called the Great Depression.
7. Catcalling
We all have this magnificent idea in our head of what it’s like to be hit on. We strut down the street in our designer miniskirt and impossibly tall stilettos as sexy construction men stop to wink at us, just as the steam from the sewer grate shoots our hair into a glorious tuft. Once we snap out of our daydream, we come to terms with the fact that it’s really nothing like this. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. Catcalling usually consists of the fat, greasy, middle-aged men who are repaving your street. They hoot and holler at just about anything that moves on their lunch break, in between taking large, repulsive bites of their gas-station roast beef sub. Most guys have this preconceived notion that girls adore being catcalled, no matter who is doing the catcalling, and they probably secretly wished that women did more catcalling themselves. Um, no. We’re not dogs, and we don’t appreciate feeling like them.
8. Pap smears
We’re all waiting for the day when Stephen King writes a horror-novel-turned-movie about Pap smears. Nothing will ever take away the uneasy feeling we get when we walk into the exam room to see a tray filled with metal tools and clamps large enough to hold down an elephant. No matter how many you’ve had, you still feel like you’re about to hit the deck when you see those football stadium lights pointed right at your glory hole. Boys, have you ever tried to carry on a casual conversation with a stranger while you’re doing the spread eagle on an exam table? Talk about vulnerable.
9. Camel toes
Camel toes are the mother of all female punishments. Leather leggings suddenly become somewhat of a fashion suicide the second they start creeping up our lady alleys. The worst part? They aren’t something we can discreetly fix. If only guys knew how lucky they are to not have to worry about this. These rascals even ruin things like our daily gym routine–we get deep in the elliptical zone when all of a sudden, our Nike running leggings are climbing up the front. We can’t help but think, “What day is it? HUMP DAY!” D*mn you, camel toes.