Women are a complex and beautiful mystery. Incredible in their strength, and somewhat terrifyingly awesome. They are also foul, gross beasts that do the kinds of normal disgusting things that menfolk probably burned them as witches for in the past. Which is probably why they keep such activities secret from us in the present day.

That’s right, as it turns out women are just as disgusting as men in their habits. Possibly even more so – although their saving grace is they have the decency not to flaunt their filth in public…unlike the certain portion of the species with the dangly bits between our legs.

It’s interesting to note that a lot of the things women do that are disgusting are also the things that men do – they burp, they scratch their sweaty crotches, they undertake obsessive explorations of their genitals. But that’s not the subject of this article. No, this is a list of the things the lady in your life does when you’re not looking, the stuff that you don’t know and probably don’t want to know, but we’re going to force you to look at anyway. If for no other reason than to remind you that even though she hides herself away to undertake creepy, filthy…often gratuitously bodily-fluid related shenanigans, she’s still awesome. A private hot mess of a human being just like you, and awesome.

Oh, and for some added ick-factor, remember that some of these apply to your mother, too. There – that’ll replace the whale in your nightmares.

20. The Trumpet Trip

Most men feel content and safe in the knowledge that women don’t fart. They simply squat down and leave little parcels of rose petals for the fairies to take away.

This of course is a dastardly piece of propaganda, doubtlessly concocted by ancient priestesses to preserve men’s fragile minds, and ensure that the mystery of the female thunder cloud is kept safe for the aeons.

The truth is, of course women fart. They’ll casually let a toxic vapor drop out of their ass as much as any guy will. The shocking part is the other thing they do.

Women will take a special trip to the bathroom with the single intention of unleashing the loudest possible fart imaginable. Not just a face-saving locking oneself away because the fart they have brewing might stink a bit, no. This is a visit purely to glory in the sheer joy of forcing out a bottom bellow that the Vikings would probably have used to summon the gods to war.

I am woman, hear me roar.

19. Insider Art

Over the years, men have gotten used to the idea of women spending endless hours in the bathroom. Most don’t know what goes on in there, and on the occasions they poke their head around the door, they’re still pretty baffled. So, for the most part, if a lady is undertaking a good long session in the shower, men just assume there’s important business going on in there. Probably business that involves shaving, possibly witchcraft.

The truth is much more strange and unnatural than that. If she’s spending more than 10 minutes in the shower, she’s likely busy being creative. No, not creative in the way that makes you wonder whether you should be in there too, creative in a kinda gross way.

See, she has a lot of hair, and a good amount of that hair gets clogged around the drain area. What she’s doing is…well, she’s scooping up that sodden rat’s nest in her fingers, slapping it against the wall, and proceeding to while away the minutes creating interesting artwork with it. Some women go for making recognizable figures and scenes, others just make abstract forms…frankly, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, she’s just in there, fiddling with clumps of dead hair.

18. The Shampoo Dodge

After all that time spent in the shower, practicing their burgeoning artistic talents in the field of follicle manipulation, you would have thought that they’d given their hair a thorough washing. They seem to think so too, as most women are absolutely content to not wash their hair again for another week or more.

They have this secret potion. It’s called dry shampoo, and it’s a lie in a can. They spray it all over their hair, giving the impression that their hair is all nice and clean, pure and innocent as SpongeBob. For a week or more they keep doing this, all the while deceiving the world, as beneath the surface dirt and grime gathers, creating the perfect breeding ground for…who knows? There’s probably alien parasites in there, or possibly the Phantom of the Opera.

Only when her hair is practically solid from this wanton slovenly behavior does she dive in the shower and unleash whatever hell lies therein. Which probably explains Pandora’s Box a little better.

17. The Lengthy Tenant

Men tend to treat that time of the month, the visit from Aunt Flo, the Masque of the Red Death, with some trepidation. By trepidation, we obviously mean we stick our fingers in our ears and sing loudly while trying to pretend that women don’t bleed from their vaginas.

That’s not the gross part.

Men are aware of tampons, even if they don’t always understand the intricate mechanics of their use. But they generally assume that women don’t keep them inside them for longer than necessary. In this, men are horribly wrong. Once your lady has shoved one of those bad boys up herself, she’ll sometimes leave it sitting there, gathering blood and discharge, getting icky for way longer than its recommended period. Not because she’s being economical, not because she’s grown oddly attached to it and talks to it on the journey to work, but simply because it’s a significant mission just to change that shit out.

But that’s not the worst part, because…

16. Things Get…Forgotten

It’s okay to be a little bit absent minded. We’ve all forgotten to take the cat out of the oven, or to remove damning evidence from our pockets before dropping bloody clothes into the dry cleaners.

There are some things, you would have thought, that surely one doesn’t forget easily. You would hope that for women, toward the top of that list is they would never forget that they have a tampon inside them.

The truth is, this happens quite often. Despite (possibly dubious) news stories of women getting infections and almost dying because they left their tampon wedged inside them, women are frequently forgetting their little friend is still up there, still gathering various vaginal ephemera, probably judging them from within.

For your own sanity, it is recommended that you don’t dwell on the removal procedure of the forgotten device, or upon what smells it might give off upon release, and what state it’s in when she’s holding it between her fingers, inspecting it.

15. The Staining

We’re not going to dwell on periods, mostly because it’s beneath us both as journalists and as sophisticated men about town. Even if it is icky poo. But it’s important to complete the menstrual trifecta – which is a great name for a hard punk all-female supergroup. Menstrual Trifecta.

Obviously, once the crimson wave has been surfed, there’s bound to be some fallout. Some poor victims that we shall build memorials to at some future date. Chief among those victims, are the panties. Yes, sometimes even the favourite underwear gets stained so badly that the police start to dig into cold cases.

However, ladies don’t do what men assume they do in this situation. They don’t shrug, say (or sing) Que Cera Cera, and slam dunk the offending undercrackers into the trashcan. No, they keep hold of those blood-browned, fluid streaked garments, squirrel them away in a drawer for when mother nature kicks her in the nethers the following month.

Sure, it’s a sensible and economically sound move. But it’s still totally gross to have an old bloody gusset scraping against the underside of your va-jay-jay. Or even just having them lurking inside your drawer ready to jump out at us if we dare peek inside…which is a thing that can happen.

14. The Extra Layers

Ever notice that your lady friend’s face looks…well…just a layer or two thicker? Obviously you’d never utter such a preposterous notion, because such a disastrous vocal misstep could see your gentlemanly parts ascend deep inside your bowels. But, just sometimes, by a fraction of a hair’s breadth?

That’s probably because, while it’s generally assumed that women diligently remove all traces of makeup every night, such a notion is just not always practical. Or sometimes, like a normal human person, she just can’t be bothered. So ladies often just apply new layers of makeup overtop of the old, sometimes for days, ignoring the grease and dirt built up over time, clogging their pores, festering in the tissue of their skin.

Thankfully, they can obtain a certain kind of secret satisfaction through…

13.  The Cleansing Inspection

While most men are happy to just quickly blast the surface of their faces with a blowtorch in order to start the day clean and fresh, women have an entirely different ritual. A kind of disturbing ritual.

The pore strip is an invention only somebody fascinated with filth could have possibly dream up, and someone with a deep understanding of how women are fascinated by their own disgusting leavings. The strips are applied to the face, left for a few moments, and then yanked off again, leaving the pores clean. Lovely.

But then your lady will spend an inordinate amount of time admiring the underside of the strip, inspecting the amazing little trees built of dirt, and grease, and sinful brown muck. She’s proud of them, and if she could get away with it, she’d probably keep a photo record and stick them in an album for future archaeologists to find and wonder how the human race managed to function at all.

12. The Downstairs Casual Fondle

Fondle is an amazing word. It’s right up there with shenanigans and moist. However, it’s important to note that what we’re talking about here isn’t the very distracting idea of her fondling herself for sexual gratification. Nope.

In secret, when you’re not around, she’ll shove her hands deep inside her pants and have something of a rummage through her pubic hair. Again, not sexual, not even exploring for beasties that might be residing within her feminine forestry, just casually caressing her wiry pubes. You’re going to think very differently now when she says she loves running her fingers through her hair, aren’t you?

That said, at least women have the decency to do this in private – the likelihood is you saw seven men walking down the street with their hands deeply wedged down the front of their pants before it was even lunchtime.

11. The Sniff Test

It’s important to be aware of one’s personal hygiene. No-one would ever argue with that, and it’s at the very least considerate to everyone around you that you occasionally give yourself a nasal once-over, just to be sure you’re not the stinky friend that everyone’s whispering about. Those gossiping bastards.

But we’re not talking about a quick sniff of the armpits, here. No, one of the things your significant other does when she’s alone is perform something of a baffling feat of flexibility, taking a deep lungful of the atmosphere around her ladyparts, just to make sure that there’s no lingering miasmas that could rival mustard gas. In modern parlance – she’s checking for vag stank.

This is extremely considerate, and the reason men don’t do this is not because they’re inconsiderate beasts, but because if they could perform this kind of maneuver on themselves, they’d likely never leave the house.

10. The Phalangeal Debris

Much as she labors over her nails in order to get them to a level of perfection that borders on the obsessive (this isn’t for your benefit, by the way. Get over yourself), there’s almost no avoiding a little chipping of nail polish during the course of her daily duties. After all, she can’t take on an elite team of super assassins without using her fists, can she?

However, with alarming regularity, what comes off the surface of her nails isn’t the odd dusting, but rather hefty shards that she absolutely notices flying off of her. Does she do anything about this? No, she just leaves the debris where it lies, even if she sees it fall into a plate of food (not her own, of course), or littering the surface of a colleague’s desk. Want to be grossed out even more? Just look for search engine results on “nail polish chips in my food”, and you’ll rummage through your restaurant meals, searching for leavings, until something more gross attracts your attention.

9. The Long, Dark Season of the Bra

The bra (cue angelic choirs). While men have come to covet this item since their adolescence – because it’s where the boobies live, you know? – to women it’s a largely functional cage to keep their tee-taas supported throughout the day.

Now, while one would assume that women have at least one bra for every day of the week, like panties (and we’ll get to that horror show shortly), the truth is that not every bra is comfortable enough for daily use. As a result, often – not just occasionally, often – she’ll wear the same bra for days on end. The fabric of the bra soaking up all those working hours’ worth of sweat and grime, bathing her funbags in the brine of her human juice.

Wanna know which one of her bras is the most comfortable? Just look for the one that’s gone grey from years of stale perspiration and smearings of dead skin.

Still wanna touch those boobs? Of course you do, you filthy weasel.

Speaking of boobs…

8. The Cleavage Crumbs

Waste not want not, as the saying goes. Everybody has a little food mishap occasionally, and women are no different. Thing is, because she has all this extra equipment on the front of her, a lot of the time dropped food tends to fall down into her cleavage.

Now, then, bearing in mind that in all probability she’s been wearing the same sweat-soaked bra for the last several days, one would assume that the only reasonable course of action is just accepting that morsel as the one that got away. A sacrifice to the boob goddess. Because who would want a sweat and grime-tainted bit of food in their mouth? Your girlfriend, that’s who. If there’s no-one around to see it, she’ll stick her hand down her cleavage, and rescue the escapee foodstuff, before chomping it down. Who knows, the sweat might have seasoned it a little.

7. The Squeeze-n-See

No, this has nothing to do with the boob-related entries above, you single-minded oaf! This is something far more disquieting. Now, nobody would deny any woman in this world the opportunity to enjoy a little entertainment. Thing is, when she’s alone she’s not enjoying the kind of wholesome recreation that comes from pitting gladiators against lions. No, for this one she once again heads to the bathroom.

She has zits. Of course she does. But the reason you’ve probably never seen them is because behind that closed bathroom door she’s having a whale of a time without you! She leans toward the mirror and plays a nice game of pus-ian roulette – is the zit she’s gonna squeeze going to emerge like a long, pus-y worm, or is it going to explode against the mirror with a satisfying splat? She’s hoping for the latter, by the way, and she’s going to leave the remains spattered against the mirror, displaying her marksmanship for any passerby to see.

However, this nightmare doesn’t stop here…

6. The “Sharing is Caring” Scenario

Normal human people tend to have at least a couple of friends. You know, other meat sacks that they can have deep conversations on the subject of cats in clothing with – the important stuff. Of course, all men are familiar with the close bonds women have with their female friends, where they actually tell them things and don’t act in an emotionally stunted manner.

But women can take this whole friendship business a little too far. When they’re alone with their very best of bestest besties, the lady in your life will not just pop her own pus-heavy pimples against the mirror, she’ll take care of her friend’s too. Personal contact is one thing, but gripping your friend’s overloaded zits and running the risk of having the contents hit you in the eye…that’s like taking a blood oath.

And then there’s other things they do with their friends…

5. The Crapper Conversation

Men occasionally talk to each other while they’re standing at the urinal, usually only when drunk, and it’s always a strictly eyes-forward, kinda repressed arrangement. Women, when the menfolk aren’t around, don’t have any such inhibitions.

Yep, in public bathrooms, she’ll squat down with the stall door open, and have a full on face-to-face conversation with her friends while taking a poop. Research has rendered it unclear as to whether it’s acceptable to be undertaking a particularly fragrant or – and excuse the graphic nature of this next – squirty business in full company of her companions, but it seems to be a perfectly normal and casual occurrence.

Maybe it just sounds strange to men because we often need to apply an inordinate amount of concentration to our pooping, and couldn’t possibly multitask with such an important part of our day.

4. The Reversal

Remember that gross thing about wearing the same bra for days on end? That was a little icky, but it’s not the worst laundry decision she makes without you knowing it.

Sometimes it’s just too much hassle to whip off her panties, and choose another pair from the millions she owns. Or maybe laundry day just hasn’t reared its head yet. Either way, she’s taking the underwear she wore the day before, flipping them inside out regardless of any stains and grime they might have accumulated and slipping them on for another day in the saddle. Hopefully that’s a figurative saddle, or things are gonna get pretty unpleasant down there.

3. The Dose Of Ammonia

This one is sort of frighteningly common. You know, when you take a peek at the murky underbelly of society and then realise everybody is in on their dark deeds. Your mom, your high school math teacher, your girlfriend who you willingly spend time with. They all pee on themselves when they’re in the shower.

They just let it flow where they stand, covering their feet in hot urine. Which, apparently, is actually pretty good if you’ve got athlete’s foot. Which, sure, can be forgiven because of the constantly flowing water washing it all away. However, and you might have to brace yourself for this bit – women also pee IN THE BATH!

In the bath! Where there’s no escaping from it, just letting it gather around her body, which she’s probably gonna touch you with, or lay in your bed with, or exist in civilized society with.

2. The Downstairs Survey

Curiosity sometimes gets the better of us all. But if old wives are to be believed, such activity murders cats. For ladies, curiosity regularly leads them to behave in odd and slightly gross ways.

Ladies have a kind of weird obsession with their butts and the general surrounding area that men have no real interest in. Maybe it’s because men are too focused on the going on in the front, that they never stop to check how they look from behind, but for women, their asses are a source of fascination.

When alone, they’ll crane their necks to take a look at their hind-quarters in the mirror, which is on the mild end…but then the take it to odd length. Like bending over and using their cell phone to take pictures of their ass from a variety of acrobatic positions. Just to see what it looks like from different angles. And they do this a lot.

Honestly, who wants to see close up pictures of their own butt? Sure, looking at other people’s butts is fun, but your own? You poop from there, you know?

1. The Panty Analysis

We all enjoy a bit of inspection after we’ve sneezed, judging the consistency and color of the mucus and writing it down in the snot log we’ve been diligently keeping since we were 9 years old. That’s a no-brainer. Now, this may make you throw up a little in your mouth, but it needs to be said: the lady in your life analyses the shit out of the contents of her panties.

We’re not saying that she leaves chunks of viscous material in her gusset, that’d be horrific! No, what she does, when she takes off her underwear far from prying eyes, is run a scan over the various marks, streaks, and stains that have been left on the general gusset area. You know, a thorough healthy inspection to figure out what the hell kind of discharge might have left this stain, or what could be meant by that area that looks like slugs have been running over it?

This of course has some important health benefits, as the color and consistency of bodily leavings can be good indicator of all kinds of issues. However, something tells us that this is less health related, more gross and morbid curiosity.

Sources: buzzfeed.com, dose.com, metro.co.uk, cosmopolitan.com