I love pink and glitter as much as the next person, but I don’t need everything that I own, including razors, power tools and underwear, to be exuding femininity . I just want them to work well and not cost twice as much as the versions designed for men!
Women on Reddit have recently been calling out all of the products and procedures they have to deal with that were clearly designed by men for women. From the discomfort of getting a mammogram or IUD to the frustration of trying to find comfortable clothes that actually fit properly, you’re likely to relate to many of the replies down below if you’re a woman. But regardless of your gender, enjoy scrolling through and be sure to upvote the things you find most infuriating!
Abortion laws.
Sellarse , Scott Graham/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Every single gyno procedure and lack of pain meds given for it.
abynew , MART PRODUCTION/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Most women’s shoes are shaped to be long, thin and pointy. My feet are not long, thin and pointy, they are foot-shaped, and shoe shopping is a*s.
Nopetynope12 , Michael Burrows/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Someone PLEASE put more belt loops on my work pants! Oh, and NORMAL pockets, please and thankyou.
TURBOSCUDDY , Jeanna/Flickr(not the actual photo) Report
Most pharmaceuticals, unfortunately.
vermilion-chartreuse , Pixabay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Religious rules. And clothes without pockets.
MrLazyLion , Pixabay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Sports bras and their removable pads.
DeeLite04 , Julia Rekamie/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Button down shirts that don’t account for breasts and if you CAN button it all the way up you have these huge gaps and stretching between the buttons.
tenaciouslyteetering , Tradlands/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
Women’s Genital Wash. Summers Eve, for example, is a modern brand. The vagina is self-cleaning. The fragrances and chemicals in these washes can cause infections. Do not wash inside your vagina! Water only.
CharmingTails , Yaroslav Shuraev/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Women’s power tools. They are just a pink version of the men’s tools, or they are just a less powerful version. No redesign of the weight, shape, or grip size to make them easier to hold for our body shapes, just a pink tax.
123-91-1 , sylvar/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
Car seat belts. Mine slips up all the time, and I have it on the lowest setting. I am 5'4" tall. So uncomfortable.
Quietly_dangerous , Nikita Krasnov/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Maternity leave. I’m in the US where you’re lucky to have it and even if you do there are often ridiculous stipulations like, leave starting only when you go into labor. There’s no way a system where the expectation is that 100% of women will be able to work until a baby literally begins to fall out of them was designed by a woman.
automoth , Lisa Fotios/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Birth control - because most women even nowadays still don’t know it is perfectly safe not to get a period when you are on it. The 7 day pill gap was invented by men and priests back in the day so the pill would look like it keeps the normal cycle. IT does not and you don’t need a period when you are on the pill.
atlasaxis , Simone van der Koelen/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
All obgyn vaginal procedures. BARBARIC.
awkwardabteverything , Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Ok, this is niche, but I hate it whenever I go to sit at a bar and there are no hooks under the bar. Double points if the stools don’t have a back where I can loop my purse/coat over the seat back, and I am stuck piling my purse and/or coat in my lap. Same for public restrooms - pleaseee put a hook on the door so I’m not precariously balancing my purse on my lap or worse on the floor.
Catwymyn , Southern Foodways Alliance/Flickr (not the acual photo) Report
Razors. I just buy the regular man-version if I wanna use a razor.
Mirawenya , Helen Barth/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Whoever designed auto-flushing toilets. The damn thing is throwing sewage water on the back of my thighs before I can get my pants up. Wtaf?!?!.
Indigojoyglow , David Brown/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Wasn’t there some guys on shark tank or something like it that made gloves for women to use to change their menstrual products? They were single use and pink or something?.
silverandstuffs , SomNaderi Report
When you get a needle biopsy, you have to lie on a cold formica table with a sharp edged hole w yr breast dangling through it. The first time I had to do this, we (me, women docs and nurses) all commented on the terrible design of the thing. When I has another needle biopsy a few years later, the table had been redesigned. It was now pink. ❤️.
yttiksesom2 , Thirteen Of Clubs/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
The chainsaw. I wish I never knew this fact.
justputonsomemusic , Scottish Rural Network/Flickr Report
Every public restroom I’ve been to that doesn’t have a little trash receptacle in the stall. Having to walk your soiled sanitary products to the main trash in the handwashing area is adding insult to injury when periods suck enough. .
gingasaurusrexx , Hafidz Alifuddin/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
There is a patent for labia glue that dissolves when you pee on it do use while on your period to hold the blood in. A male chiropractor invented and tried to sell it. So that.
Jerkrollatex , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Scented pads, especially mint “flavoured” ones.
Pr1ncesszuko Report
PPE. Unisex fit my a*s
Moonpiemo , Mack Male/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
I had a baby and we used bottles to administer formula. The numbers and oz indicator lines were in white. WHITE.
TheRedWoman00 , nerissa’s ring/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
Most lingerie.
lesla222 , Tricia/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
Tampons, considering they didn’t think to test them with actual blood until last year.
h2otowm , Karolina Grabowska/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Sports shorts Search for it on google and add men or women and see the difference.
saadmerie , KoolShooters/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Anything that is just a pink or purple variation of the men’s version.
soline , revac film’s&photography/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Hiking backpacks with a breast strap.
Sternenschweif4a , Mitch Barrie/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
Mammograms. Routinely squeezing boobs between two plates of plexiglass. Find a better way. Imagine if men had to put their balls between two plate and have their nuts painfully squashed every year.
sticksnstone Report
Mammograms.
Alex9Andy , Anna Shvets/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
High heels, which after an hour resemble instruments of torture.
-Rainbow_Kitty- , Ron Lach/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Clothes - hardly any pockets, if they do, it’s rare they they a a decent size that actually holds the items in. Handbags - many are too small and useless for any woman carrying more than 1 card and a little bit of cash. Seatbelts - they don’t fit right because they were designed for breast-less people apparently.
Queen_Anomalocaris , Ksenia Chernaya/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
The IUD was invented by Richard Richter in 1909 and the design was updated by Ernst Gräfenberg.
SundaeEducational808 , Sarah Mirk/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
Let’s be real here: most things.
operarose Report
EpeeLizM Report
99% of women’s clothing? (no pockets, waist short enough for an oompa loompah that just gets wider never longer, underwear that scrunch up your as regardless of its modest size, pants that create muffin tops, pants that you can’t bend your legs in because calf muscles apparently aren’t fashionable, coochie splitting “jumpers” where the waist is never long enough, cold shirts with sleeves that track in everything, fragile s***y lacy shirts to be seen in / freeze in, jackets with no pockets, jeans and pants with no pockets, shoes you can’t run in).
flotsam71 Report
Society.
Son_of_kitsch Report
I’m pretty sure cars? Last I heard, most or all crash tests are used with a male model, but that might’ve changed semi-recently.
sbmskxdudn Report
The whole healthcare system as a concept.
Aglot_ Report
Underwear, because it nearly never fits. Always rides up. Especially when those high cut 80s things came out there were no proper fitting ones anymore, eventually I found boyleg undies, but they are still different from what they used to make. Plus the double fabric is in the wrong place. Definitely must be designed by men, women wouldn’t do that.
VeganMonkey Report
Tampax (and possibly other brands) tampons. It swells in length instead of getting wider when expanding. It’s pushing you in spots nobody wants to ever feel pressure imo, it’s just not correct anatomically speaking. Apparently, many got genuinely sick from using them due to this (I haven’t seen any official reports tbf, just reading it up on the internet and some anecdotal evidence) and it’s causing pain for others, including me. It hurt like hell, and definitely was not comfortable at all at any point. You just cannot not feel it. When I lived in the UK, I either had to spend a smaller fortune on buying OB tampons from various sites on the internet or ask someone to bring me some when they were visiting a country that had them, as they’re not being sold in the UK. I tried several other brands, including Lidl and drugstores’ own brands, and while OB was the best in my opinion, most were not as uncomfortable as Tampax was besides a few. I do apologise for not naming more, but Tampax is the most common as far as I’ve seen and I’ve tried so many brands I just can’t remember their names. Edit:typo.
salary_slave_53749 Report
Tampons in a cardboard applicator.
tigerclawwwwwwwwwwww Report
Toilet cubicles - never enough room for sanitary bins.
Elmaccas , Acabashi/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
I bought a last-minute dress for my father-in-law’s funeral last week where the top bit was a wraparound with poppers to essentially keep your breasts in. I had to sit there in church praying they wouldn’t pop open at possibly the worst occasion imaginable (although my partner said his dad would have actually found that hilarious). Yeah, men please stop designing women’s clothes, thanks.
magnolia_lily Report
Leggings with a seam in the crotch.
maridska , Jorge Acre/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
Any female outfit in mmorpg.
blackbubbleass Report
Lab coats. Totally random, but mine makes me look awful. Like a teletubby. Also, the sleeves are too long in the size that fits me. Have to roll them up. The buttons pop open on the chest and hip every day. My boyfriend, meanwhile, looks like a pinup. We finally have custom Rx safety glasses! Where are the custom lab coats?!.
doggo-spotter Report
Not quite what you were looking for but skincare and cosmetics. It was still a largely male dominated industry up until the 90s. In many countries the key decision makers in “big beauty retail” is still men. Men still hold most of the purse strings in the industry people just don’t know it or are too lazy to recognise it.
bibijoe Report
The car park ticket machine thingys that you have to get juuuust close enough that you can still reach the machine without your wing mirrors hitting it. Men are simply taller and thus have longer arms whereas us short girlies must suffer. :(.
cubist_tubist Report
Not as much these days, but kitchens. More men cook now than previously, but kitchens are still used more by women, and mostly designed by men. My husband was a good cook, we shared the kitchen. But things I couldn’t reach were no problem for him. We both hated the kitchen in this house, (I still do) but we never got around to changing it. TBH, I don’t know how well the average person, any make or model, would do at designing a kitchen. You’d have to build ’em and use ’em to find the flaws, and figure out how to do it better. Things don’t always work in practice, as well as they looked on paper. Or in the computer program.
Effective-Gift6223 Report
“Chick cars” that still don’t have anywhere to put your handbag if you have a passenger.
miss_kimba , Scarlet Sappho/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report
Birth control.
MangoSuccessful1662 , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report
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