Hairy, Horny & Hysterical: Myths About Women We Need to Kill

Apparently, there are a LOT of rules for being a woman.

Shave your legs because body hair is unhygienic. Don't get too emotional. Women are terrible drivers. Men want sex more than women. Your hymen proves whether you're a virgin. And once you hit a certain age, your sex drive is apparently supposed to pack its bags and leave.

Oh, and false eyelashes? According to one particularly ridiculous internet myth, those somehow started because of sex workers and semen.

Seriously. Who the hell made these rules?

That's what we decided to unpack on this week's episode of Taboo Talk: Not Safe for Brunch, because when you actually start questioning some of the things women have been told for generations, a surprising number of them don't hold up very well.

Watch or listen to the full episode here, because trust us, the conversation goes places. 😂

Body Hair Isn't Dirty

Let's start with one many women heard growing up: women are supposed to shave because body hair is somehow dirty or unhygienic.

Except body hair isn't inherently unhygienic.

Shaving became increasingly normalized for North American women in the early 1900s as women's clothing began exposing more of the legs and underarms. That also created a brand-new market for companies already selling razors to men.

Suddenly, female body hair wasn't just hair. It was something embarrassing that needed to be removed.

And think about the double standard.

If underarm or leg hair were inherently unhygienic, wouldn't men's hair be just as unhygienic?

Women can absolutely shave because they like how it looks or feels. The issue isn't shaving. It's being taught that our natural bodies are somehow dirty if we don't.

High Heels Weren't Even Originally for Women

Here's another fun one.

High heels weren't invented to make women's legs look sexy.

Heeled footwear existed long before the modern women's pump, and heels were historically worn by men. Among their uses, heels helped horseback riders keep their feet in stirrups. They also became associated with wealth and status in European fashion.

Eventually, heels shifted into women's fashion and became strongly associated with femininity and attractiveness.

So something once connected to male status eventually became something women were expected to wear to look sexy.

And somewhere along the way we collectively decided sore feet, blisters and bunions were apparently a reasonable price for looking hot.

No thank you.

No, False Eyelashes Were Not Invented as "Cumbrellas"

We can't believe this one needs its own section, but here we are.

There's an internet story claiming false eyelashes were created for sex workers to prevent semen from getting into their eyes, earning them the nickname "cumbrellas."

It's a myth.

False eyelashes became associated with beauty, theatre and the film industry, particularly as filmmakers looked for ways to exaggerate actors' eyes and facial expressions on camera.

Yet the sex-work story keeps getting repeated.

It's a perfect example of how misinformation works. Someone says something shocking or funny, someone else repeats it, and eventually people forget to ask whether there's any evidence behind it.

Are Women Really Bad Drivers?

We've all heard this stereotype.

A woman struggles to parallel park and suddenly it's proof that women can't drive.

A man speeds, tailgates and cuts across three lanes of traffic and he's just... an asshole.

Interesting distinction.

Driving ability isn't determined by whether someone is a man or woman. Research into traffic safety has repeatedly found differences in driving behaviour and crash risk between sexes, particularly among younger drivers, with men more likely to engage in some higher-risk driving behaviours.

Yet somehow the joke that women are bad drivers has survived for generations.

That's one of the problems with stereotypes. Once we believe them, we start noticing every example that confirms them while ignoring everything that doesn't.

Women Aren't Walking Hormone Machines

Women are also supposedly "more emotional."

Hormones can influence mood. Of course they can.

But there's also a massive cultural difference in how we're taught to interpret emotion depending on who's showing it.

A man gets angry in a meeting?

He's passionate. Assertive. Confident.

A woman gets angry?

She's emotional. Difficult. Hysterical.

And if she stays completely calm while disagreeing?

Well, there's another word people like to use for her.

Women aren't necessarily experiencing some completely different category of human emotion. We're often simply judged differently for expressing it.

Do Men Really Want Sex More Than Women?

This one causes real problems because people don't just joke about it. They bring it into relationships.

We're taught that men naturally want sex all the time while women have lower sex drives.

Except libido isn't that simple.

Sexual desire varies enormously from one person to another and can be affected by hormones, stress, sleep, medications, relationship dynamics, mental health, body image, physical comfort and what's happening in someone's life.

There isn't one universal "female libido."

And women get screwed on both ends of this stereotype.

Want lots of sex? You're slutty or hypersexual.

Don't want enough sex? You're frigid or a prude.

Apparently there's an imaginary Goldilocks amount of horny women are supposed to maintain.

Good luck finding it.

Being Turned On Doesn't Mean Someone Owes You Sex

Then there's blue balls.

Yes, epididymal hypertension, commonly called blue balls, can cause temporary discomfort after prolonged sexual arousal without orgasm.

No, that doesn't mean another person is responsible for fixing it.

Someone becoming aroused does not create a sexual debt that another person is required to repay.

You can acknowledge that the discomfort exists while also recognizing that consent doesn't suddenly disappear because somebody's testicles hurt.

As we say on the podcast: your pleasure is your responsibility.

Your Hymen Doesn't Prove Virginity

The idea that someone's hymen can prove whether they've had vaginal sex has caused an unbelievable amount of shame and misinformation.

The hymen isn't a freshness seal.

It's tissue around the vaginal opening, and its shape, thickness and appearance naturally vary from person to person. Hymenal tissue can also stretch or change for reasons unrelated to intercourse.

There is no reliable physical examination that can determine whether someone has previously had vaginal intercourse simply by examining their hymen.

Yet historically, enormous cultural significance has been attached to women's virginity and the idea that their bodies should somehow provide physical "proof" of it.

That's a whole lot of social control built around anatomy people didn't properly understand.

And No, Women Don't Automatically Stop Wanting Sex When They Get Older

This might be one of our favourites.

Women get older and apparently their libido is supposed to disappear.

Except sexual desire doesn't have an expiration date.

Desire can absolutely change with age. Hormonal changes, menopause, medications, stress, sleep, physical comfort, body image, relationships and life circumstances can all affect sexuality.

But here's another possibility we don't talk about enough:

Maybe some women aren't losing their desire. Maybe they're losing their willingness to have bad sex.

For some women, their 40s and 50s can actually bring more sexual confidence.

The kids may be older. There may be more privacy. They know their bodies better. They're more comfortable communicating what they want.

And perhaps most importantly, the give-a-fuck meter isn't quite as functional as it used to be.

Maybe women don't necessarily become less sexual as they age.

Maybe some of us just become less interested in pretending.

Maybe We Need to Start Questioning the Rules

That's really the point of all of this.

If you've heard something your entire life, that doesn't automatically make it true.

Sometimes it means nobody stopped to question it.

Some of the rules we've inherited about women's bodies came from marketing. Some came from cultural expectations. Some came from misunderstandings about anatomy and sexuality. Some are stereotypes.

And some are just complete bullshit that got repeated often enough that everyone forgot to ask where they came from.

So we'll leave you with the same question we asked at the end of the episode:

What's something you were taught about women, sex or your own body that you believed for years before eventually realizing it wasn't true?

Because apparently we've got some generational myth-busting to do.