Girlology: A Girl's Guide to Stuff that Matters Read online

  If you think you have PMS, you can do some things to make it better. First, you can predict when you will start your period and then also predict when your PMS will start. Use the menstrual calendar we provided. If you are prepared for it, it may not affect you so much.

  PMS Busters

  Get some exercise for at least 30 minutes a day.

  Eat a dinner that is rich in complex carbohydrates, low in protein and fat—especially avoid animal protein and fat.

  Avoid caffeine and salty foods.

  Make sure you get some alone time to relax: Write in your journal, listen to some music or just do nothing!

  Taking certain vitamins and minerals may help, including vitamin B6 tablets, calcium, magnesium and vitamin E.

  Taking omega-3 fatty acids, like evening primrose oil, fish oil or flaxseed oil, can help with mood problems, cramping and breast tenderness.

  Wearing a supportive bra like a sports bra can help with breast tenderness.

  Drinking herbal diuretic, caffeine-free tea can help with the bloating or puffiness. Remember to drink plenty of water!

  Only about three or four in one hundred women will have PMS that’s so bad they need medications to help it. That is rare. If you think you have PMS that is really bad, your doctor should be able to help you with medications or other suggestions.

  Do Something Special for Yourself

  Lots of women think that periods are a real burden. Some even call their period “the curse”! But that’s not necessarily how it has to be. In fact, most girls and women don’t let periods get in their way at all.

  Some people will also say, “Oh, you’re a woman now.” Guess what? Not! There’s a lot more to being a woman than just having a period. You are still a girl, and you can still have all the fun that girls are supposed to have. Don’t let your period get in your way!

  If you find yourself feeling crabby or crampy around your period time, use it as a signal for you to do something nice for yourself, something you love . . . alone! Like to read? Play music? Watch the clouds? Curl up with your pet? Do it! Enjoy something special that gives you YOUTIME, and it will automatically make you feel a little better! You can use this time to focus on yourself. You may find that you actually enjoy and look forward to doing something special for yourself, even if it is period time. We hope that girls with Girl Power will celebrate their gift of girlhood, and having a period is just part of what makes all of us sisters special.

  7

  Boy, Oh Boy!

  Enough about periods for a while, let’s talk about boys! Now, for this whole thing about having babies—it won’t happen just because you have a period. It takes sperm from a man getting together with an egg from a woman to make a baby. Funny thing about guys is that they don’t start making sperm until they go through puberty. (Remember, we are born with all of our eggs. Guys have to start from scratch.)

  So have you noticed your guy friends going through puberty? Girls go through it several years earlier than guys. You are probably already in the midst of it, but your guy friends are just noticing changes around ages eleven to fourteen. That’s partly why girls are sometimes “romantically interested” long before their guy friends are clued in to girls and crushes.

  You’ll know they are catching up in the puberty scene when you notice some thin, whispy hair on their upper lips (trying to become a mustache). You might notice more acne, voice changes and fast increases in their height. What you don’t notice is one of their first signs of puberty. Their testicles enlarge and their penises grow (getting more information than you want?). It seems unfair that one of the first signs of puberty for a girl is obvious to everyone (we start growing breasts, and it’s hard to hide that!). For guys this early sign is not so obvious (well, that’s probably a good thing!).

  Boy Parts

  Well, we have to talk about it a little, so in case you didn’t know yet, a boy’s “private body parts,” or external genitalia, are different from yours, especially in one area (no kidding!). Here are the words:

  Penis (also known as a dick, a pecker, a unit, a johnson, a tally wacker, a weenie, a prick, a one-eyed monster . . . why so many names?!)— the tubelike thing that boys pee out of. It’s also where sperm comes out. It’s made of soft spongy tissue and is usually soft and floppy. When a guy gets sexually excited, the spongy tissue becomes full of blood (engorged). This makes the whole penis hard, and it “stands up” instead of flopping down—that’s called an erection (or a hard-on, a woody, a boner). The penis needs to be erect to allow it to go into the vagina during sex. An erection is an interesting thing . . . really! So interesting, in fact, that we have more about it in the erection section later in this chapter . . . keep reading!

  Urethra—connects the bladder (which is where urine is stored) to the penis and outside, so it’s where the urine (pee) comes out. It is also connected with the parts involved in sperm travel. That means it’s how the sperm gets out, too. It contains a valve that is like a door that lets only one of these things happen at a time. So when a guy is peeing, sperm can’t come out, and likewise, when sperm is coming out, he can’t pee. When we get more into the sex stuff later, this will seem more important!

  Testes (also called testicles)—where guys make sperm and where the male hormone (called testosterone) comes from. Testosterone is the hormone that causes boys to grow facial hair, pubic hair, larger muscles and thickened vocal cords that give them their deeper voice (after it goes through the squeaky phase while the voicebox is growing). Guys have two testes, and they often call them their “balls” or their “nuts.” They can be really tender and painful if hit or bumped hard. That’s why guys in sports have to wear a plastic guard called an athletic cup over their penis and testicles to protect those sensitive parts. Some guys in other sports may wear a jock strap, which holds the penis and testicles close to the body and keeps them from flopping and swinging too much. A jock strap keeps a guy’s privates comfortable and secure, like a jogging bra keeps our breasts snug and comfy during vigorous activity.

  Scrotum—the sac of skin that hold the testicles. It’s located behind the penis and between the legs. Did you know that sperm can only be made properly at a temperature that is slightly lower than our usual body temperature (in fact, they grow best at precisely 96.6 degrees Fahrenheit)? That’s why the scrotum hangs away from the body and keeps the testicles cooler, so they can do their thing. In really cold weather, the scrotum will pull closer into the body to keep the testicles at the right temperature. So guys kind of have this built-in incubator with its own thermometer . . . wow! But don’t believe for a minute that hanging out in a hot tub will kill a guy’s sperm and make it impossible to get pregnant!

  Sperm—the little things that a male makes that fertilize a female’s egg. Sperm are so tiny that millions of them would fit into a teaspoon. You can’t see a sperm unless you look under a microscope. If you do that, they actually look like tiny tadpoles, and they swim! It takes about 90 days for a sperm to grow and mature in the male. When they come out of the penis, it is called ejaculation. For girls, only one egg is released each cycle, but for a guy, each time he ejaculates, he lets go of many millions of sperm. Some sperm will make girl babies, and some will make boy babies, so it’s up to the man’s sperm, not the woman’s egg, to determine whether a baby boy or baby girl will be made. (By the way, the plural form of sperm is sperm. So it’s one sperm, two sperm, five million sperm.)

  Epididymus—a very long, coiled-up tube on the outside surface of each testicle. It’s where the baby sperm spend a few weeks while they are growing into mature sperm . . . kind of like the incubator. When a male ejaculates, the sperm come from the epididymus, travel through some tubes and go out the opening at the end of the penis.

  Prostate and seminal vesicles—two glands that are inside a male that add fluid to the sperm so they have something to swim in and nutrition for the trip (have snacks, will travel!). Once the fluid is added to the sperm, the mixture is called semen.

&nbs
p; Semen—we just told you what this is, but we want to make sure you realize that semen is what comes out of the penis during sex or sexual excitement (the act is called ejaculation or “coming,” and the fluid itself is called semen, ejaculate or cum). When it comes out, it amounts to less than a tablespoon of liquid, but guess how many sperm are in it? MILLIONS!!! And it only takes ONE to fertilize an egg! When ejaculation happens, all those little sperm race to see which one can get to the egg first and make a baby. Talk about competitive!

  Erection Section

  If you are like most girls, erections seem like a really unusual phenomenon to you. For a girl, the closest thing that happens like that and can be noticeable to others is when you are wearing a thin shirt and your nipples get hard and poke out like headlights coming on! Sometimes embarrassing, sometimes not even noticeable. For guys, erections can be even worse.

  Can you imagine something between your legs suddenly becoming hard, about twice its usual size and sticking up? That’s the embarrassing thing that happens to boys when they are in puberty and beyond. Boys can get erections even as babies. It happens sometimes if they have to pee or if they rub or play with their penises. In puberty, boys get “boners” a lot more frequently because of their hormones. Erections can be unpredictable and can happen at the worst times . . . like when a guy is asked to get up in front of the class to read a report. Yikes.

  Erections usually happen if a guy is thinking about something sexy or having a fantasy. It will also happen if he is “playing with himself ” or masturbating. The embarrassing part for guys, though, is that sometimes they have no control over a sudden erection. It’s certainly not something you want to point out to them like, “Um, excuse me, is that a banana in your pocket or are you having an erection?”

  Most of the time, guys find a way to hide it. They either won’t stand up, or they might put their hands in their pockets to hold themselves down. (“Down boy, down!”) Sometimes they will think about something unexciting (like kissing their grandmothers) to make erections go away. These erections usually last only a minute or so when they happen like that.

  A teen guy will almost definitely get an erection if he is dancing closely, body to body, with his “sweetie” or if his crush sits on his lap. If you are the subject of one of these erections, don’t worry, it’s not your responsibility to help him make it go away. Some guys might expect you to “do something” sexual to help them “finish” their sexual excitement with an orgasm (read more about that in the next section). The great news here is that ALL guys know how to take care of that all by themselves. You should feel NO obligation, and don’t let any guy tell you differently!

  The other thing you might hear about is a nocturnal emission— fondly known as a wet dream. A wet dream is when a guy ejaculates in his sleep. It might happen because of a sexy dream, or it might just happen for no reason. No need to ask your guy friends about it. They won’t want to talk about it, and some guys never have one.

  The Journey of a Sperm

  If you’ve been paying attention, we are sure you know that sex is how a baby is made, and we will definitely talk a lot more about sex stuff in this book. For now, let’s concentrate on getting this anatomy straight. It seems like a lot to learn, but it makes more sense when you understand how it all connects and works together. Let us take you on an amazing, swirly, twistyturny journey that will start with a sperm and end with a pregnancy happening in a female. Ready? Here we go.

  • Sperm are made in the testes. (You know that by now, right?)

  • They travel into the epididymus (incubator), where they hang out for a few weeks until they grow and mature.

  • With sexual excitement (we’ll get to that later), they are pushed through another tube called the vas deferens. In the vas deferens, they pass the seminal vesicles and prostate gland where they pick up their nutrients and fluids (snacks) and officially become semen.

  • As the journey out continues, the sperm travel into the penis ,and with ejaculation, the semen squirts out of the penis through the urethra.

  • If they come out during sexual intercourse, they find themselves in a woman’s vagina (hey, where are we? how’d we get here?). And they’re off, up the vagina, through the cervix, into the uterus, then into one of the fallopian tubes. Little do they know, there is usually only one egg. So that means about HALF of them will make a wrong turn down the empty fallopian tube (you know how men don’t like to ask for directions. . . .).

  • Anyway . . . ahoy! After a long upstream swim, some (actually many many thousands) of the sperm finally reach the egg that has been floating peacefully down the fallopian tube since it ovulated. Eggs only live about 24 to 48 hours after ovulation, but sperm can live up to a week, so timing is important.

  • They all surround the egg and start wiggling their way into it. Once one sperm gets through the egg’s wall, a special chemical is released that prevents any others from getting in. It’s like a lock down (or getting grounded!).

  • The egg and sperm, now together, will share their genes (DNA or biological information that determines how a person looks, grows, etc.), and they begin to grow into a ball of cells that can eventually become a baby. The ball of cells (called an embryo) will then travel back into the uterus. It settles into the thick, lush, nutrient-rich endometrium (remember the “bed”?).

  • Blood vessels from the mother begin to feed the pregnancy, and it continues to grow for the next nine months into a real, live baby! The birth of that baby is another story we don’t have space for in this book, but it is incredible!

  It’s an amazing miracle!

  8

  S-E-X

  When you hear the word sex, what do you think of? Your parents or grandparents may refer to sex as “the birds and the bees.” Whatever. Most people think of that penis-in-vagina thing, but there’s really a lot more to it. What about feeling attracted to someone? Holding hands? Kissing? Touching? Intercourse? Oral sex? All of these are part of sex. And the penis-in-vagina thing is usually near the end, not the beginning, of sex. See? There’s a lot to talk about when we say that very big little three-lettered word, S-E-X.

  Sex: The Basics

  Let’s start with the basics. From a scientific viewpoint, pregnancy is just a sperm and an egg coming together at just the right time to make a new living creature. For many animals, that’s about all there is to it. You might see frogs mating in your backyard (maybe you just thought they were playing piggyback). You probably have seen a dog trying to mate with another dog (or sometimes someone’s leg). But for humans, who have the unique ability to feel love, to communicate, to bond with other humans and to express feelings, sex is a much bigger deal! It should involve a lot of emotional closeness and intimacy, a lot of trust and comfort. It should be something that both people are ready for and agree to do.

  Puberty is when your body becomes sexually mature. But to be mature enough for responsible sexual activity is another whole long and involved process that includes your emotions, your sense of self and your ability to be in a healthy relationship. Just because you have the parts and the plumbing doesn’t mean you’re ready to use them (more about this later).

  There are a lot of ways to safely explore your body’s feelings and pleasures besides having sex. There’s other stuff, like “petting” or making out, before “going all the way.” Girls with Girl Power need to know about the basics of sex, but they also know that Empowered Girls wait until they are mature enough to deal with all the responsibilities and consequences that come with sex. They don’t have sex before they KNOW they are ready.

  The actual “activity” of sexual intercourse can sound sort of icky and awkward, but in the right relationship, when there is love and trust and comfort, it is not icky at all. Bear with us while we explain a few details. (Here comes the birds and the bees part you’ve been waiting for! )

  Birds and the Bees?

  What do they have to do with sex? Great question. It all goes back to Victorian times whe
n sex was never mentioned, and people were so uptight about sex that they made up an explanation for reproduction based on plants in nature. The birds were part of plant reproduction because they spread seeds. They would eat berries and seeds, then spread them as they left their droppings throughout nature. That’s the birds’ part. The bees then were responsible for helping things in nature to grow by pollinating them. So the Victorian families gave that explanation about seeds and pollination to help explain sex to their “children.” That explanation usually occurred on the eve of their weddings. Talk about some confusion!! Aren’t you glad we’re just getting this sex stuff all out in the open?

  Foreplay

  When a couple is sexually excited, they may kiss and touch each other. It feels good physically and emotionally. Usually, their hearts beat fast, they start breathing more heavily and they may also get sweaty. As a man gets sexually excited, he will get an erection. As the woman gets sexually excited, her vagina will make extra liquid (it’s called lubrication) that makes the vagina more slippery. The vagina will also start to expand some and become more elastic or stretchy. Her nipples and clitoris may also get hard or erect. All this excitement and touching or caressing is called foreplay. It prepares the man’s body and the woman’s body for sexual intercourse, but sexual intercourse doesn’t HAVE to happen just because there is sexual excitement.