#puberty talks straight up don't cover a lot of the stuff that happens as you grow

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Honestly, nothing made me angrier than when I learned that you are supposed to gain weight during female puberty.

You're supposed to get thick around the middle, you're supposed to get baby fat. You're developing tits, which are basically just fat, you're developing wider hips, which require more fat— it's literally just how female puberty works, you get fat around the middle in your early teens and and then your body moves that fat later on to the places it needs to go.

You're supposed to develop curves. "Curvy" isn't just "a nice word for fat" like I genuinely thought in my teens, it's literally just how your body is meant to be shaped. Afab people naturally store more fat.

(For the record, there's nothing wrong with being actually fat either, and some people's bodies are just meant to be shaped that way. Being fat doesn't necessarily mean you're unhealthy. Just in general, fat isn't inherently bad.)

Faces as well. Like not just for afab people, but people's faces are naturally rounder in their teens and early twenties, and naturally change and gain definition later on. Like this is why "baby-faced" is a thing— young people's faces look different.

(The reason the young people on TV don't look like that, fyi, is because most of the young people on TV are played by 30 year old actors.)

Nobody ever told me this growing up. I used to do fucking exercises in front of the mirror as a teen to try and make my face thinner, because I was so self-conscious about my cheeks being chubby and my face being round, and then years later I found out that that was fucking normal, that that's just what young people's faces fucking look like…

I've posted about this before, but genuinely, we need better education about puberty in schools. Like conversations like this always centre on sex ed specifically, and obviously that's important, but honestly it would have saved me so much heartache growing up if somebody had sat me down and told me exactly what was going to happen to my body, rather than just sticking to the basic 'pubes, periods and tits' talk that seems to be all schools actually want to cover.

#this is the follow up to my body hair post btw #like same deal #puberty talks straight up don't cover a lot of the stuff that happens as you grow #and that needs as much attention as the sex ed stuff does #puberty #body fat #puppy fat #teenagers #childhood #biology