Chuck and Josh Make It Through Female Puberty

might listen to this. So this one's for Nola exactly, and for all you families out there, all you kids, all your parents. Just like with the male puberty episode, we hope that this serves as a springboard to conversation because from what I found in research, and I'm sure you did as well, that one of the big big things that you need to try to maintain, which is exceedingly difficult, is open lines of communication with your pubescent daughter.

And if you're the pubescent kid turning into a woman, you need to try to share your feelings and talk to your rents if at all possible. Yeah, that's tough. And you know, this is very similar to male puberty. I found not completely but well, I mean obviously physiologically it's different, but going through a lot of the same stuff. Yeah,

for sure. Um, and and you're right, there will be that point as a parent where you and I've heard this from friends where they finally look at their teenage daughter who was you were once their hero and now you're just a big lam Oh you're a zero, You're not funny, you're not cool. Uh And why should I listen to you about anything, because you're also a big fat hypocrite, right exactly. Just get ready, folks, Yeah, get

ready to you. And then well yeah, true, yeah, but then after the age of thirteen, you're gonna be friends again when they're like in their mid twenties, and they're gonna think you're great again after the age of thirteen. I don't think that's the way it works at all. Between thirteen and like three, oh yeah, they're probably gonna think you're super lame. That's called the waste land years. And then they think you're cool again. Yeah, well I

was talking to give me about this. Then you feel bad about you treated them from thirteen twenty you realize, Yeah, they're they're not so bad after all. That. So female puberty and um, the girls, if you're listening to this and you are going through puberty, you're about to go through puberty. Um, let us just be the the just one thing that you turn to to find out more

about talk to people. Like I said, there's also a ton a ton of stuff on the internet that has some really great advice suggestions just basically type female puberty. And anything that looks like it was compiled by a doctor or reviewed by a doctor, it's probably fairly trustworthy. Yeah. And um, here's a piece of advice. Uh, go to

iTunes and subscribe to stuff mom never told you. Oh yeah, that's a good that's a good advice from our colleagues, Caroline Kristen, because it is great and especially at that age, they will help you through a whole host of issues hormonal and emotional and physical and empower you. And it's a great show. And they even have covered this probably better than we will. But at least let us get you going in the right direction, you know, Like I'm

I'm tittering nervously over here. I think you can imagine, but I'm strangely calmer with this one than I was with the male puberty one. I don't understand why. Yeah, I could tell you since uh, since that you were more nervous than the other one. So it's great, you know what it is because I got to come to this one from the same research perspective, Like I'm researching. I'm not an expert, I'm an outsider researching it. And here's what I came up with with male pubers, like

I went through there. So I think it was just more personal. Maybe I hear you. Okay, so let's get this started, right, okay, Chuck. Yes, Let's say you're a little girl, okay, run about age eight, loving it. Things are great and long. Maybe you got like, uh, your nie skinned last week and that's bumming you out still, But for the most part, you're pretty happy with everything, and then all of a sudden, things just start to get a little weird. You can't quite put your finger

on it. But what just happened was the g p R fifty four gene. Since that you have reached the

minimum amount of fat in your body. Lepton is what it monitors, and it caused the hypothalmus, which is a cute little playing in your brain to distribute a chemical that it's just been holding in reserve basically since you were born, called ganadotropin releasing hormon or g n r H. And you know that game mouse Trap, which no one on the history of Earth ever actually finished before they just set it off and made the whole thing go. I didn't know there was a game attached to it, right, right,

pretty much, that's pretty much what it evolves too. This is basically like mouse Trap for your body. Yeah. And that um, that fat that you were talking about in the lefton that resides there, that is a little bit of a newer finding. Uh. Previously, uh, they thought it was a critical weight theory of puberty basically just once you reach a certain mass. But now they're thinking it actually has to do with the fat itself. So that's why, Uh, if you're a little girl that's overweight, you might go

through puberty a little bit earlier. Yeah, they think that that's one reason why early onset puberty becoming more common, that's right, which we'll talk about also later, right, Yeah, which is not the same thing as precocious puberty. That's an actual medical condition that you should see a doctor about but between precocious puberty and hey, I'm just a little bit on the early side, there's a very fuzzy period now where there did not used to be. That

is not fully inderstood. No, they're still figuring it out. So don't feel bad if you don't feel like you have anything figured out either right now? Okay? Agreed? So um, the g n r H hormone, the ganeto ganado trope and releasing hormone, comes out of your hypothalamus and it slides its way down to your pituitary gland and it sets off in your pituitary gland the release of two really really important hormones that are going to be important

for the rest of your I guess productive life. Reproductive life. Yeah, LH the lutenizing hormone and f s H the follicle stimulating hormone. And so these things start coursing through the body, entering your bloodstream. And what just happened to you, my young friend, is the you hit puberty. Yeah, that that just started. And at this point you could be somewhere around age eight, nine ten. This is the first stage of puberty. Basically anywhere between ages eight and eleven. I

think it's considered in the normal range. But like Chuck said, right, there's you can go earlier, you can go later. Slapping the term normal onto that is a really like touchy thing, and for good reason, because you know, this is a very self conscious time in people's lives. So the idea that you're outside of the norm on top of this process of being abnormal or feeling abnormals, that's rough. But say on average that you're between eight and eleven when

this first happens. Yeah, there was sent me that New York Times article is really good about the onset of female puberty and um since there was a landmark study in nineteen sixty from the UK where they basically said the average ages eleven, and that was always sort of

the common thinking. But there was a woman in the nineteen eighties at the time, she was a physicians associate at Duke named Marcia Herman Giddons, and she said, I'm noticing a lot of eight and nine year old girls in my clinic that are like getting pubic hare, that are have their breast or butting, Like what's going on here? Uh? And she started writing about that, and a lot of

endochronologists were saying no, no, no, no, no, that's not right. Uh. And for a couple of uh, about twenty five years, there was a big debate about it until finally, in two thousand and ten, three major institutions Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine and New York UH published a study in Pediatric saying that by age seven of white girls, of black girls, of Hispanic girls, and two percent of Asian girls, we're

developing breasts, uh seven seven And that's that's budding breast. That's not necessarily puberty. But no, but that's that was the marker for the onset of puberty. So basically they're saying and now that they don't know quite why this is happening, but they do think that, um, if you're overweight, that that can set it off, like we said, and really interesting that family stress they think can kick off

puberty earlier. H. They've done studies where they found if you're from a broken home or if you were without your biological father, you were more than twice as likely to go into puberty early. The same with childhood depression as well. Yeah, or if your mother is suffering from depression, it might kick that off. So I think just all these family stresses can can just kick puberty in at an earlier age. That's one of the theories at least.

Well that makes sense too, because the what seems to be the increase seemingly prevalent attitude toward what constitutes the onset of puberty is that once once you're getantotropin hormone is released, then you're in puberty. Everything else is just kind of symptomatic or markers of puberty. Right, So if you are undergoing a lot of stress, well that can

lead to hormonal release, right. Well. Yeah, Plus, the last little point they make in this article was that makes sense in an evolutionary sense as far as the theory goes. They think that if you have a stressful childhood, you're inclined to earlier reproduction so you can survive bodies, Like, we better get this underway. Yeah, Like, my family is stressed, I don't know if I'm gonna survive, so I need to have a baby at like a ten. That is

hardcore natural selection thinking, right, Yeah, pretty interesting, I think. Yeah, so the the pubescent markers, right, the milestones that you go through typically go hormone release, breastbuds, the pubic hare right, and then those are the three things that that happened in that order. Typically it can happen out of order. But with with that hormone release, the first thing that

starts it out, which is first stage of puberty. What's what's happening is um, your the uterus, the womb right, which includes the uterus, the cervix, the fallopian tubes, ovaries, all this stuff are starting to develop. Um, you were born. I keep saying you, I'm not talking to you, Chuck, Well I was. I'm the little girl in this experiment, right, girls, Okay, so you you are. I'll just stay the little girl that you have your skin knee I forgotten. Um you have.

You were born with about two million to five million UM undeveloped eggs, which are called follicles. And remember one of those hormones that gets released as follicle stimulating hormones. So um, when your follicle hormones stimulating, When your follicle stimulating hormones get at least, it goes down to your ovaries and all of a sudden, you start to your engine starts revving as far as your reproductive ability goes that your body and you know, let's get you ready

to have a kid at some point, right, at some point. Yeah, this this is a year's long process. But the point is the first part of the whole thing is that the cervix, the the ovaries, the Filippian tubes, the uterus um all start to change internally and grow and develop. Sure. Yeah, so typically in the past, the beginning of puberty is said to start with monarchy, which is weird because that that word, that term, it has a long history with stuff.

You should know, Yeah, because I remember on the Totem Poles episode, it was that with the first appearance of it. I think so because they would often build monarchy totems as a celebratory uh thing when a when a young girl has her first period, that's called the monarchy, right, So typically that was always thought of as the first sign of puberty or the first step. But as we know, by the time monarchy comes on, you have already been

undergoing puberty inside your body for a little while. Yeah, it's kind of stupid to mark the onset of puberty with monarchy, because monarchy actually represents the end of your first reproductive cycle, even though you probably wouldn't have been able to conceive in that first attempt at it. It's your body like kind of going through a few dry runs. But that's a that doesn't make any sense to say, well, you had your first period, so now you're in puberty.

You've been in puberty for probably a couple of years by then. That's uh, And that monarchy can very wildly. Um. They've done studies where they founded age difference of about three and a half years, or it could be as great as three and a half years, um, and it all depends on you know, how fast your body is maturing. Well, they found a developmental difference in of up to three and a half years and girls the same age, So some girls were three and a half years further along

in puberty even though they were ten years old, you know. Um. So they figured out that hormones, probably the release of hormones mark the onset of puberty. Um. One of the other things that that comes along, like monarchy, can't it's you notice it, right, It's very noticeable the thing that happens. Um. And that's why for so long they used to say, well, now everybody knows, so we know you're in puberty, right,

even though it doesn't make any sense. As we've said, Another thing that happens fairly early on and girls in particular, is a growth spurt, but like a cartoon growth spurt, like Roger rabbit growth spurt, because the hands and the feet grow first. Yeah, well, they can grow about three and a half inches in a single year, which is a lot, but not your hands and feet. Well, yeah, you're you're your height, but the hands and feet are

gonna grow such that, um. You you might be a little clumsy because you haven't gotten used to these big banana boats at the end of your legs, right, but fear not, because eventually the rest of your body is gonna grow, um, in sync with it. What's weird is that, um, girls grow through the growth spurts before boys. To do you remember being like a boy and like the girls all of a sudden in your class from like fifth grade to sixth grade, where it's like, what what happened here?

What's going on? The giants? Exactly? Yeah? Year, Well, and I was I was never like at the head of my growth chart, so I was definitely like staring up at girls wondering why they were taller than me. Why are you mad? Why do I have special feelings about this tall girl all of a sudden? Yeah, and why are you so angry at me? Um? And we're gonna talk to you boys here as well, because I can definitely dole out some advice on how to treat your classmates.

So I'll be sprinkling that in here and there, your Uncle Chuck and Mr Clark. That's right. So you're gonna have your big hands and your big feet. You're gonna be tripping, you're gonna be dropping things, but everything. Don't worry, it's gonna even out. Your body's gonna catch up. And even though you may be taller than some of the boys in your class, um, they're gonna catch up to Um. You're just a little bit ahead of the game. Yeah, nothing to feel bad about. But you should also not

feel bad about this break right now. And then we're gonna come back and talk about more of this stuff. It's a chuck. We've kind of touched on it a little bit. But let's let's talk about the actual stages

of puberty. Okay, let's so we've we've mentioned Stage one is when the hormones start to get released from the pituitary gland, the follicle stimulating hormone, lutenizing hormone, and these along with estrogen for the rest of your reproductive life, which goes from the time of your first period until

um menopause. Right, those three hormones are gonna be really really important, and they interact with one another, and UM one triggers one and and suppresses the other UM and all of them cause those follicles, remember those tiny undeveloped eggs that you're born with, about two million, with to develop into eggs about once a month, right, this is your menstrual cycle, that's right. So by the time you enter puberty, the two million follicles, those two million eggs

actually have dwindled down to about four hundred thousand. And every time you menstright, starting with that first time, about a thousand of those follicles get stimulated and start to turn into eggs. But one of them is just like the runaway stand out, the head of the class, the A plus student, and that one will develop into what's

called an ovum, which is a matured, unfertilized egg. And as your as your estrogen levels grow throughout the month and increase and increase they hit this this peak level, and when it peaks, it triggers the sudden release of lutenizing hormone, and that lutenizing hormone causes that egg to pop out of your follicle and you know, the fallopian tube and travel down to your uterus, and that is called ovulation. This is probably not gonna happen on the

first period monarchy. Um, but I mean, it's entirely possible. But this is the when you have monarchy. It's um, it's again. It's usually like a dry run, like you're trying to your body is figuring it out. Uh. Second stage? Are we there yet? I think so? Okay, I guess you should ask me. I'm the little girl here are Are you ready to move on to the second stage? Yes, Mr Clark? Okay, uh oh man, weird is getting kind

of weird. The second stage of puberty. Um. Again, it's going to vary in age, but we'll go ahead and say like eleven or twelve years old, Um, this is when your breasts are gonna begin to grow, or as they say and butting, is when the ariola is gonna darken and rise some and you're gonna get some of

that breast tissue. And you you know, it might be at that point that your parents say, all right, well, maybe it's time to go to the store and introduce you to something called the brazier or which no one calls it anymore, it's called a little bra. And um, you know, getting fitted for that thing I've heard is not a lot of fun because it's like some big mystery and it's hard to get it just right. But hopefully mom and dad will will take you in or

a cool older sister. Yeah, and hopefully anyan dad's can be involved in this stuff too. But since mom has the experience, they can probably lend a little more like insight, I would say. Right, and speaking of your mom, if you have a wish to know probably what your breaths are going to grow too in size. That sounded like a joke, like an elementary school joke, speaking of your mom. Yes, you your your mom's breast size is probably a decent

indicator of what yours is gonna grow too. But you're made up of your mom and your dad, and your dad just he just throws the whole thing off. So really, ultimately, the best the best resources to look at your maternal and paternal grandmothers and see what their breast sides look like. Right, and don't freak out if there's are around their waist because breast fall over the years and you don't need

to sweat that just yet. Maybe you could look at pictures of them when they were younger, finally hit on that might be horrifying. The third stage, Oh wait, I'm sorry. Second stage, you're gonna start getting some of that pubic hare, right, and that's when the growth spurt's going to appear as well. And your bones are growing really really fast. Um, but they're not as dense as they would be normally. They're not calcified fully, so they can break pretty easy. So

you need to be careful here. Yeah, that's why you see a lot of little girls little boys walk around arm casts. Although I have never broken a bone. I think you better knock on wood. I'm knocking on wood. Do you still have that knock on wood? President? I got you, I sure do, nice. I do it all the time at home. Uh. Third stage pubic care is going to continue to grow. The breasts are going to continue to grow. Hair actually shows up all over the place. Yeah,

just like a little boys. All of a sudden, it was like in the armpits. It's around your growing areas like a jungle. Yeah, just growing all over the place. Uh. Your vagina is gonna grow in size. And this is usually about the age of twelve to thirteen. And by this time, about seventy of girls, um that have hit stage three have already had monarchy. That's right. And you might say we should probably pause here for a second, chuck. If if you are a girl listening to this, there

might be a burning question like what is going on? Why? What's the teleological reason for all of this? Right? Sure, that's what they're saying. Um, what has happened is your body has sensed that you you have enough fat to sustain a child, a fetus, and your body is undergoing the necessary changes to allow you to conceive a child and then carry it to full term. That's what's happening

with your body right now, That's right. Another thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna start sweating and becoming a stinky little monster. Uh. And that's probably when you're gonna say, Hey, while we're at the store getting my first bra, how about a stick of Deo durant, right, anti perse print. Those days of chasing fireflies all night and not taking a bath for eight days with no repercussions, right, and not smelling at all, smelling like a daisy the whole time.

Those days are gone for the rest of your life. That's right. And parents, be you know, sensitive to this. Don't make fun of your kids. Tell them there're stinky monsters like I just did. Well, Yeah, you're talking to other people's kids. Yeah, be nicer about it, because some kids might laugh and think it's funny. Some kids might be very sensitive to that thing. Just the tad you know, which is normal. It's normal stage four around the age

of thirteen or fourteen. Um. The height that you're growing is gonna slow down a little bit. You're not gonna be growing as tall. Boys are gonna start catching up to you in height and your fat levels. Your body fat is gonna basically reach your adult level body fat. Like in just a couple of years, you could have gone from somewhere in the neighborhood of like eight percent body fat to twenty six percent body fat. Uh. And you do not want to lose this weight. This is

this is um normal weight gain. That's right, that your body needs for to be in reproductive health. That's right, you're gonna be Uh. If you've had your first period, that means you've had your second and third. By this point, your body is probably trying to work out some sort of a regular rhythm, although for the first little while

it's probably gonna be fairly irregular. Oh yeah, your cycle for many times, and supposedly girls who go through monarchy after thirteen tend to have very irregular periods up until eighteen yea, and even beyond that, even as an adult, you can go out of rhythm for all sorts of different things, including like birth control. Yeah. Absolutely uh. And then stage five is when you are have fully matured UM fourteen to seventeen all the way up to like

nineteen years old. You are through the stages of puberty. You're probably as tall as you're gonna get. Your breasts you're probably as big as they're gonna get without any kind of surgical help, and um, your pubic hare is hopefully as fully developed as it's gonna get. And then finally, your your skeleton and your muscles and your cardiovascular system, everything you're you're basically a young woman. You can vote, you can't drink, and you can't rent a car. Right,

that's where you're at in life pretty much. So. UM. One of the the again, one of the long time markers of um pubescence in girls has been breast development, starting with breast buds, right, And what's going on there is your um. Again, your body's developing so that it can support a kid internally. And UM, one of the things that you will have to do once you have a kid, or be able to do is the nurse. Right,

So your breast development is changing. There's more tissue, they're they're getting bigger, and the one of the reasons they're getting bigger is because there's they're actually structurally changing, so you're forming milk ducks in there and new layers of fatty tissue so that you can nurse. It's pretty cool. And actually I read a really really interesting article on UM mother's milk and the Stranger the other day. UM,

it's amazing stuff. Get this, dude. So apparently mother's milk can change day to day and produce new antibodies based on what the infant needs. So, like, if the infant is battling like a little bit of a bug. The mom's body can produce anybodies that are transferred through the milk.

They're like, how does the mom know this? And they have figured out that the baby saliva communicates what what what anybody's here she needs through the nipple, and then the mother's body analyzes that stuff and goes, oh, we need these humanibodies, produces it and gives it to the kid in the form of milk. This is what you will be able to do in just a few years. Girls, that's pretty phenomenal stuff, that's right. Uh. So, as your breast are getting larger, uh, they may be sore, they

may be itchy. Uh. If you have rapid growth, they may have some stretch marks. Don't need to worry about any of this stuff. They may be uh not the same size. One breast might grow quicker than the other. That's okay too. And Chuck, like you said, also, depending on your race, um, you may develop breastbuds earlier later again, totally normal. That's right, all right, So Chuck, the breasts are developed, the hormones are raging, um so, and the

womb is developing, right. And as the womb is developing and it's learning to ovulate. Right. Um. The menstrual cycle, Guys, you and I tend to think of it as basically this um one week thing that happens, right, it's actually a usually a between a twenty and thirty day process. And it's not just the the part where you have your mensies, which is the part where you're shedding the

endometrium from inside the uterus, the lining. It's this whole process of the follicles becoming stimulated, producing an ovum, the ovum traveling down the fallopian tube to the uterus hanging out there waiting to see whether it gets fertilized or not, and um. And then when the egg doesn't get fertilized, that endometrium, the lining of the uterus, which has become rich with like these blood vessels as part of the

menstrual process, gets shed. Right. But before it gets shed, one of the things that will suddenly appear about six months prior to monarchy is what's called a white vaginal discharge. That's right, it is completely normal and it is uh the precursor to your first period. You don't need to stress out about it if you find that, uh, you know, you're in your room and you're getting ready for bed, and you you see something you haven't seen before in

your underwear, then don't freak out. It's all very normal. It actually means that you have a very healthy uh uterus. That's right. Uh. There are all kinds of charge actually, and I did not know that there are all kinds of discharge. Are you referring to that one UM article we said, there's there's a great article on our podcast page that has photos of different types of discharge that that says, this is normal. This is normal. See a doctor,

this is normal, you know. Yeah, the normal types UM light yellow discharge if you haven't started your period yet, the white, thick discharge is common at the beginning and end of the cycle. UM should not itch. If there is an itch going on, then you could have a yeast infection, right, which is basically just a bloom of candid to which can be brought on by things like taking antibiotics or something like that. The discharge can be clear and stretchy. That means you are ovulating. That is

fertile mucus, right, That's the that's the good stuff. That's the stuff that let's sperm get in there and really travel to the ovum. That's right, clear and watery. That is not a problem either. That can occur at all times of the cycle. Uh. It can be dark yellow or green. Uh, and that could be a problem, and that means there could be an infection, especially like I said, if it's itchy, or if it's clumpy, or if it has a bad odor, then that may be something you

need to get checked out. But for the most part of this stuff, it's called cervical mucus, and you're going to be discharging it for basically the rest of your life, just a it's just a fact of life. And again it means that you have a nice, healthy uterus and everything's all well with it, unless again there's some warning signs to it, and if there are discussing a doctor,

get fixed up. You'll be fine. Yeah. And the last one I think we should mention is brown because that can probably be pretty stressful if you've never seen that before as a young girl. And that's after your period, and that's all that is is your body just cleaning things out. And also again completely normal because blood when it's old looks brown, right, So that's vaginal discharge. That's different from your actual mensies right. So with your menzies um,

that is where you're shedding. Remember that really blood vessel rich lining that gets developed every month along the the um the inside of your uterus um that allows an fertilized egg to attach to it, really nourishes it and let's it turn into a fetus and all of that. It's pretty great stuff, but every month you need to shed it and and grow some more stuff. So when you shed it, that's what comes out in the form

of your your menzies right. And it can feel apparently like a waterfall for a while, but it actually usually amounts to nothing more than four tablespoons, which is like a quarter cup at the most. Yeah, on average, can last from three to ten days. Usually the heaviest part of that will be in the second and third day um. And if you do feel like you're having an abnormally

heavy period, then maybe you should call your doctor. Of course, and as you get to know your body, you're gonna you're gonna be very in tune with your cycle and you know best how you feel and whether or not you think something's going on. But the first couple will probably freak you out. Yeah, it's totally understandable. Yeah, and there's, um, there's a long history of of period shaming, uh, which is terrible, and there are a lot of people trying

to do something about that now, in particular in Australia. Uh. There's this really cool thing called a Celebration Day for Girls. I was founded in two thousand and it's a program I think founded by a woman that wrote a book called A Blessing Not a Curse, which is basically a guide book about monarchy in the in the cycle uh and said all these shameful, ugly attitudes about monarchy and in the period or obviously gonna have a really uh

negative impact on your on your child. And so they're getting together now and they're doing these workshops where they get together with mothers and their daughters or fathers and daughters are both and where they teach them about what's going on and basically saying this is not something bad or dirty or ugly or shameful. This is awesome. This is like you should celebrate this. You're becoming a woman. Yeah, when you look amazing, it's really amazing stuff. Yeah, it's

it's amazing. So, you know, I think our audience is pretty sensitive and uh, up to date and forward thinking. But if there are any dads out there, little brothers who are are making fun of sister's period or your daughter's period, just don't even make jokes. Don't make cracks. This is very stand outside for a while by yourself. It's a very rough time, or it can be, and they need to be celebrated for entering this period in their life, not not shamed. So that's good stuff, chuck. Yeah,

you know what it reminds me of. There's his kids in the hall from years and years and years ago where Dave Foley was the boyfriend with the good attitude towards menstruation. Remember that one, Hious, that's pretty good. Was there a counterpart that it was a little still liquy? Yeah,

that's good. I'm sure. I'm positive it's online. Uh. One of the things though, even though men's season, monarchy and menstruation should be celebrated and investigated and understood and not poked fun at um, is that there are some definite downsides to it. Apparently, there is a a pole of women Um that was carried out by the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals and only eight percent of women said that they um found something positive about their um menstrual cycle.

There about menstruating, they weren't very happy with it, right, And I'm sure one of the big reasons is because, um it feels awful like you cramp. And the reason why cramping is associated with it is because that endometrium is being shed and the way it sheds is your um users contracts. And it can be uncomfortable to say the least. Yeah, it can be everywhere uncomfortable to debilitating, depending on who you are. There is no single method

to relieve cramping. You might try medications or just rest or certain diet or activity, Uh, try anything. You can. Ask your your girlfriends, ask your mom, ask your weird aunt, and uh, they'll probably have some good advice on on how to you know, quell those cramps somewhat. And then finally, of course, along with menstruation comes pre minstrul old syndrome p MS, which we should do a show on at some point. And I agree wholeheartedly. Man, I think there's

a lot of um weirdness, a lot of misunderstanding around that. Yeah, I agree. Uh, there may be some bloating going on, aches and pains which you talked about, and moodiness which can happen, and you know you may not feel like yourself. Oh yeah, that's just the easiest way to say it. You're not a bad person. You may hate all boys, you might. Yeah, and again Dad's little brothers, big, go

stand outside. Don't start making fun of your sister and saying you're acting this way because you're going to have your period. That is a bad road to go down. Clean dog poop up in the yard or something. That's right, and you think about yourself for a little while. All right, Well, let's take another break here, and when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about teenage moods and acne and all the other good stuff. All right, we're back, and Jerry just gave us a stamp of approval that

we're doing a pretty good job so far. I'm not sure if I buy no man, I think she's she didn't lie to us, scurry lies. She's a publicist. Yeah, the publicists did not like that episode. Oh did you hear bad things? Uh? Huh. All I've gotten is like, yeah, you guys hit it on the head. Just a lot of them were like, you really hurt my feelings really, especially once they didn't make it all the way through

the episode. Oh where I say at the end, like, I'm just talking about big celebrity probosists, which you probably should have frontloaded because some people haven't made it through that. And they said, well, all right, let's talk about acne. Uh. We We've been over acne a bunch, so I don't think we really need to talk about the actual process of acne. Haven't we done like a whole episode on acne? Yeah, Plus we hit it again in the male puberty. Oh yeah,

but um, you're gonna get acne a little girl. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons why is because you're now producing hair follicles. And your hair follicles produced see bum, and see bum is a substance that mixes with all sorts of nasty stuff, including dead skin cells, and when it happens in the follicle itself rather than on your skin, bacteria likes to eat that stuff. You get an infection and that's is it, and it's gonna happen, but it won't happen to you as much as it does two boys.

That's right. So much for not getting into what acne is that was fast man. I was like that old FedEx guy. Uh So, this is a tough time in your life. Your body is changing. You're gonna feel weird, you might be cramping, you might feel physically odd, emotionally odd, hormonially off, and then on top of that, you're gonna add acne. It's it's cruel and unusual punishment, is what that is. And Tom actually wrote the male puberty and female puberty um articles, right, and in both of them

he says just wash your face. And we said that in the male puberty episode and we heard from some people that are like, yeah, that's great that that works for some people. It doesn't work for everybody. Know, Um, they're basically like dealing with PMS. There's a lot of different things you can try and just go find out what's good for you. Absolutely I got lucky. Some people aren't as lucky. I was not lucky. Did you have bad acney? Oh yeah, not on my face? I Backney, right,

But even still I get zits and you don't. It drives me crazy. Yeah, well it drives Emily crazy just because she wants to pop him. Yeah you mean like to do that too. She didn't get any action. So she's just like, come on, what's going on. Yeah, she looks forward to summer. I get more in the summer if you were a young girl. Um. One thing we didn't say in the boys episode, which we probably could have, because little boys can wear makeup if they want, I guess,

but take your makeup off at night. Oh yeah, I remember. For some reason, this stands out in my mind. I saw an interview with Stevie next years ago where someone was asking about her skin looking so great. Still. Oh, I think you told me this. It might have been it might have been in the acting episode, but she said, you know is even in the height of my like drinking and drugging days, at the end of the night, I would take off my makeup. And she's like, that's

why I have such great skin. That in all the lacy scarves that I wear. That helps, I guess, protects her from bugs exactly. So we've covered pretty much everything physiological. This is all the stuff that's going to happen to you. Um, physically, psychologically, there's gonna be a lot of changes too. I don't know, nothing happens psychologically, right, So, I mean, I would like to think that it's probably all based. You could probably trace every single change in emotion to hormone. I don't

think that this is necessarily true. I think that really kicks it off, really goods things going. But it is true that you have to deal with little brothers and boys who don't understand, and jerk dads and um even a nice supportive mom is going to seem like a

monster to you. Like so, I think it creates something of a feedback loop for these several years of your puberty where you are way moodier, way more stressed out, and uh, the world reacts to you as such, so you react to the world as such, and you just basically have to buckle up and hold on for this stuff. And there are a lot of really bad decisions you can make along the way because you start to have

a lot more freedom. You get your driver's license, you are out there in the world, and people have just imbued a lot more trust and responsibility and you at the time when you possibly deserve it the absolute least, but you need it the most because it's part of your development. So you really have to make some good choices at this point in time, at times when things don't quite make sense to you. So at a time like this, the best thing that you can do is

turn to Judy Bloom. Yeah, man, amen, just set you straight. She certainly will. You're gonna be really self aware for the first time. You're just happy, go lucky days is a little girl are gonna be long gone, and you're gonna be really aware of your appearance. Probably gonna be worried about your appearance. Um, that is so normal as a parent. You may think it's self obsession. It is not. It is a young girl starting to become a woman and looking in the mirror and going, what in the

world is happening here? Yeah? Right, Uh, look at my face. It just screw a quarter inch while I was standing here exactly. Uh uh. This is when your your daughter is going to start um looking at her belief system and challenging yours and saying, like I said earlier about you, big hypocrite. That's when your daughter is going to become a vegan and yell at you for buying a dog from a pet store and become aware of all these social injustices and like, how in the world can you

guys act like that? Like you're supposed to be my teachers. It's called Yeah, put food on the tube. That's all that matters. Uh. So, yeah, they're gonna be challenging you, and they're gonna be uh erratic and moody and um, it's just gonna be a big circus and you just there's no avoiding it. You just gotta get through it. Yeah, and again, I mean, like just keeping the lines of communication as open as possible and not chasing your parents out of your room when they come and try to

talk to because they seem concerned. It's a really good move. And if you're a parent's a good move to try to address stuff, especially if you're noticing things that your kid didn't do before. There's a certain amount of healthy experimentation, right sure, with with pushing boundaries and figuring out where the edges are, but that can very easily and very quickly change into like really like problematic deviant behavior. These are the choices I was telling you about earlier. Kids

that like, you have to make good choices. Even though some of your friends are not making good choices, you need to still stand up and do the right thing and the same things. And if your parent you're noticing that your kid might not be making the good choices. You have to address that. That's right. And again, I think that the best line is talking to them, not necessarily locking them in their room for the rest of their teenage years, because that doesn't work. I hate to

break it to you. Uh, kids are gonna find a way. They're gonna sneak out. They're gonna do what they want to do. So if you stay there, buddy, and as much as you can and keep those lines open, you're gonna be ahead of the game. Uh. Your daughter's gonna start caring about fashion and clothing a little more. Um, and boys just gonna go boy crazy, might go a little boy crazy, but she's gonna be looking around saying, where do I fit in? You know? Am I am

I gonna follow the trends? Or am I gonna wear? Uh? Am I gonna have my own style and just be my own person. And where these weird clothes I might get made fun of? Well supposedly like weird is like where it's at these days with the kids. Did you know that? Sure? So then we're normal clothes right and

less like a young Republican exactly. Um. Some potential pitfalls here as your body is changing because of society's obsession with the female form and getting bombarded every day with how thin you have to be and how perfect your body has to be. Uh, it is fraught with complications as a young girl to look a certain way. And this is where you can set yourself up for trouble with eating disorders or if you're if you're not good at expressing yourself, you have no outlet to doing like

self cutting and these bad things behind closed doors. Um, all of that is is very sad, scary stuff, but um, all of it can be overcome and it is all very much treatable as long as you talk to your parents about it to get their help they want to help you, or somebody someone you trust. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, And I was looking into self cutting in particular. Um, one of the it seems like if you learn to express your emotions through something like that, that's it's tough

to shed that. Apparently, like fifty or sixty percent of people who self cut as adults all started um at puberty, I'm sure. So that's that's not a healthy way to express yourself for to get the rage out or whatever it is that you're doing that for. So you again you have to be smart during this time too. Uh you Uh, your daughter might be experimenting with masturbation early on and thinking about sexy things. It's all very normal. Um,

even at a very very young age. Uh. There are young girls as young as four and five years old who find themselves simulating sex, like with their pillow in their bed, with a stuffed animal. Like I've I've seen it with my own two eyes, Mr. Bank. I don't want to embarrass anyone in my family, but I've seen it. Probably stop there, and it's uh for a parent. If you've never seen that, it can be very Yeah, it can be very disconcerting, I'm sure, but it's all super

normal and you don't have to worry about it. Um. No, but that said you were not ready for sex when you're going through puberty or even right after you emerge from it. No, of course not. And that's not at four and five. They don't even know what that is. Oh yeah, they're just uh, they know it feels good and they're messing around. And uh, don't shame them, don't make them feel like they're dirty or doing something bad. Uh. If it you know, everything I read just says you know,

just sort of wait it out and it should eventually pass. Basically, let it guess pass, yea or um, maybe if you interrupt or like interrupt her to go do something fun, play a game, um or. I even saw one advice burst into the room just as a scary clown. That'll

stop it quick. Uh. One advice thing I saw said to um sometimes to just if it's happening in front, like you're all sitting around watching TV and you see it's happening, then say, you know, would you like to go to your room and have a look private time, and then they'll come back ten minutes later and be with the family again. Where did you see that advice? It was in a on a parenting site. Huh, Well, do you think it's bad advice? No, I'm just I'm surprised.

I thought you were doling that out yourself. No, of course, I've never dealt with this, but I went to a lot of because I couldn't find any medical advice except for from parenting sites for doctors. Was that like, it's normal, it's normal. It didn't go any further than that. Yeah, basically the root of it all was don't shame them, and uh, just let them do their thing. Yeah, I mean it makes sense, all right. Should we finish up like we did with the male puberty and talk about

some puberty rituals around the world. You know, we have a future is like health coaches after this. I think I have a feeling we we did pretty good here, but also the feeling we're gonna hear from some people that are like, you guys, you know you shouldn't say this these days. Yeah, you know, like that's I've been tense the entire episode because of that. Well, we we tried to get it just right. We did, but I also, I mean, we're imparting some information here and heavy, heavy,

important information. I want to get it right, you know. Yeah, but you can't be at the leading edge of every word. We can, you know, yes, we can, all right, the female puberty rituals. There is a great history, especially pre twentieth century, of UH seclusion at the beginning of monarchy, taking a girl out of the tribe or out of the village or out of wherever for a period of a couple of days to a year or more, um

secluded away from everyone else. And I looked it up and there's a couple of reasons they think sociologically, one is to act as a social preparation where it's a good thing because they get their secluded with their moms and their aunts and they really say like all right, well now we gotta start teaching you all these things. And the other one was just superstition relating to blood as ancient as it gets, or fearing um women who

are going through their menstrual cycle. Supernatural reasons um apparently, Uh, I like this one. The Urubu cut poor in Brazil, their tribe in Brazil. Um they when a girl goes through monarchy, they cut her hair and then she can Mary once it grows back to shoulder length. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, like it's it's almost like a preternatural understanding of the development that the body still has yet to go through before she can you know Mary. Yeah,

it's a good point. Uh. In Ghana, there are villages that um for a few weeks, they separate the girl from the village and then they give her instruction which we were talking about, which is a good thing on social mora, aids and sex said and courtship, and then then they have a big celebration, which is really nice. With Yeah, same with the Jewish community as of the twentieth century. Um, with the advent of bot mitzvah's, which is like a bar mitzvah for girls. Yeah, but they

didn't have them before the twentieth century. Yeah. And I looked into other rituals and things, and almost every one of them I saw we're sort of along those same lines, which is, seclude them for a little while, teach them about things, and then throw a big party. Uh. Did

you see the Apache one, the morning Star dance? When an Apache girl goes through monarchy, Um, she's secluded from the rest of the village for four days, goes through this um basically a period of fasting, um, getting very little sleep, and on the fourth day, while she's already basically starving and sleep to probably, she does a dance

from sundown to sun up? Are you kidding me? And um they there's a really neat national geographic video about it where this girl is so excited because this is like this marks the transition to womanhood for her, you know. But um, she learns a lot about herself, her tribe or history, um during this period because she's hanging out with her you know, her mom and her grandmother and just being taught all this stuff. Interesting. Yeah, it sounds pretty cool. I saw some South American tribe. I think

that files the teeth into fangs. Why monarchy? Monarchy? Uh, have you got anything else? I got nothing else? Man. I hope we did something good here. I think we did. I feel good about it. Uh. If you want to know more about female puberty, you can type those words into your favorite search engine and I'll bring up all sorts of stuff. You could also type it into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since

I said search parts, time for a listener mail. Hey guys, I just tweeted at you, so you may have seen this, but I wanted to make sure you got my appreciation loud and clear. Just finished listening to the Auto Tune episode, which, in my humble opinion, was one of the best you've ever done. A lot of people like that one, and I wanted to thank you both for being so conscious about letting Tracy and Holly have the mic for your listener mail discussion. You let the women speak about their

experiences instead of subtly making it all about the dudes. Uh. In this should not be an extraordinary thing. Yet it was. Indeed, it demonstrated that you both have an excellent grasp of what it means to be a male feminist and solid allies to disenfranchise groups. I wish more men in my line of work had your attitude and intent on a lobbyist for a nonprofit, by the way, that works against domestic violence. So bravo, three cheers and well done. And

that is from Noel. Do tweet. Thanks a lot. No, well, yeah, that's really nice of you. Try do your best. Yeah I didn't. Yeah, do your best. Suddenly making it about us, We didn't do that. Uh not this not this time, time, this time. If you want to get in touch with us to give us kudos or say you guys suck or whatever reason um, or to let us know if we really missed the mark on female puberty, we want to hear all about it. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us

on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. H