If Tyra Banks can tell everyone on “The Tyra Show” when she got her first period-during 11th grade, at her dad’s house-so can The Frisky editors. I’ll start!
Mine came summer time after 7th grade on the second morning of sailing lessons in the local country club. (Shut up, I am a WASP.) One the very first day of obnoxiously preppy sailing class, the students had to tread water within the pool for some minutes to prove that we wouldn’t drown when the boats capsized. But my Blair Waldorf-ian self awoke the morning of the second class with blood within my underwear! Because I’m my mom’s baby, she majorly teared-up over me getting my period-so embarrassing! So I just snatched the pads from her and hissed that I didn’t want to discuss it. Mom had no opportunity to teach me about tampons and that i didn’t ask!
But I spent the following a few days of sailing class terrified we’d have to go within the pool again, or my boat would capsize and I’d get wet, and everybody knows I was wearing a large, soggy pad. To this day, that’s pretty much all I recall about sailing lessons! I didn’t make use of a tampon for the first time until I was 16 (throughout a performance of “The Vagina Monologues” of all places). Alas, at that time, my sailing days were over.
I’m only some of the Frisk-ette having a slightly tragic first period story. Our tales of tampons and trauma, following the jump.
“I got my first period what about a week prior to the “menstruation” segment in our Health and the Human Body class in middle school. It had not been dramatic-I first got it both at home and went to my mother who showed me that which was happening and did the whole hippie sit-you-down-with-a-mirror-and-get-you-to-explore-your-downtown-area thing. She also explained pads and tampons. A few days later at school, we watched a filmstrip about them which was so from the ’70s. It showed how you can secure a pad to some metal belt, that is evidently what they did before pads had adhesive. Every girl at school was flipping out! I remember feeling so ‘advanced’ and knowledgeable when I explained that nowadays pads had adhesive and you didn’t really have to wear a belt.”
“I was visiting family in New York and going through every tourist site possible. After your day, I went home and found the mess. Good thing I was inside my grandma’s! My dad raised me, so Grandma was the only other female!”
“On the evening I first got my period, I had a swim meet. So, I had to stop wasting time about learning how to put in a tampon-no pads for me personally. My mother was, like, ‘Just think, Janet Evans [an Olympic swimmer] probably competes when she’s her period.'”
“I got my period pretty early, but it felt enjoy it took forever result in a few of my friends got theirs first and I felt like I wasn’t within their cool period club. I found out about periods initially, though, because my mom was pretty open beside me about that stuff and one time I walked in on her behalf within the bathroom and she or he were built with a pad in her own undies with blood on it and i am sure I was, like, ‘Wah, exactly why is my mommy bleeding from her vagina?!’ For whatever reason my mother was super pro-pad, anti-tampon. She was kind of earthy so I think she thought your period blood wants to flow OUT of you why put a stopper in your vag? Or something. And so i didn’t use tampons until late high school, which seems like such a gross tragedy in hindsight. No wonder I didn’t have boyfriends.”
What is your first period story? Share with us in the comments section below!