People Are Sharing Products They Suspect Were Prooobably Designed By Men, And I'm Nodding So Hard I Cricked My Neck

BAN those triangular sports bra inserts...

Recently, Reddit user u/LuinAelin asked the people of r/AskReddit which products that are typically marketed towards women are so badly designed, they might just have been made by people who have never been one. Here are some of the most-upvoted replies:

Of course, the products included in this post are usually marketed towards women, but they aren't the only people they're suitable for — and poor design doesn't always mean a man's hand is to blame. 

1. "Weren’t there some guys on Shark Tank or something like it that made gloves for people to use to change their menstrual products? They were single-use and pink or something?"

VOX / RTL+

u/silverandstuffs

Yep — they were called Pinky Gloves, and were shown on the German version of Dragon's Den or Shark Tank. 

"Wait till they hear about a crazy newfangled phenomenon called handwashing."

u/kochka93

2. "There was another [American] guy who tried to invent some kind of vagina glue so people could get up in the morning and glue their lips shut instead of worrying about menstrual products at all!"

Vithun Khamsong / Getty Images

"Then when they had to pee the stream of urine would ‘unseal’ the lips and flush out all the blood. After you wipe, you reapply and glue shut until the next time. 

I don’t know how many people without a womb he worked with on this idea before someone explained basic fucking biology, but there were an alarming number of people who thought it was a great idea…" 

u/TeslasAndKids·  

3. "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."

Andresr / Getty Images

u/tenaciouslyteetering

4. "Sports bras and their removable pads."

Photo_chaz / Getty Images/iStockphoto

u/DeeLite04

"The F*CKING TRIANGLES that fold and get wrinkles and you have that tiny window to fix them! I HATE THEM SO MUCH." 

u/darling_lycosidae·  

5. "Every single gynecological procedure and the lack of pain meds given for it."

Jasmin Merdan / Getty Images

u/abynew

6. "PPE. Unisex fit my ass."

Owen Franken / Getty Images

u/Moonpiemo  

"I give grant money to first responders and one of the things they buy with our funds are gloves, different suit types, etc. It is generally for training so depending on the suit and item it is reused and so you would think they would have a whole variety of sizes.

I am 5’5” and overall fairly petite, and every single time I visit them I make a point to try on the suits (especially any gloves cause I have small hands). Not one single fire department has had any reusable item that fits me. I always say, 'So, uh, do y'all just not hire people who aren't cis men? 'Cause you’re supposed to have sizes available for trainees that safely fit them.'

The only excuses I’ve heard were that 'they don’t make them in women’s sizes,' which may at least in part be true, but the whole damn point of the grant is to have this stuff available to ALL trainees. They are allowed to pay more to ensure everyone has proper gear to train in.

The first responders in charge of purchasing always yuck it up at how silly I look in the massively oversized gear until I remind them that each year, first responders consistently get injured and die during training. Like yeah, maybe she wouldn’t have been crushed to death when she couldn’t control a vehicle properly with gloves ten sizes too big." 

u/cynicalibis

7. "Someone PLEASE put more belt loops on my work pants! Oh, and NORMAL pockets, please and thank you."

Freshsplash / Getty Images

u/TURBOSCUDDY

8. "Most shoes marketed towards women are shaped to be long, thin, and pointy. My feet are not long, thin, and pointy, they are foot-shaped, and shoe shopping is ass."

Warner Bros. Pictures

u/Nopetynope12·  

9. "Razors. I just buy the marketed-to-men version if I wanna use a razor..."

Skynesher / Getty Images

u/Mirawenya

10. "Car seat belts. Mine slips up all the time, and I have it on the lowest setting. I am 5'4" tall. So uncomfortable."

Westend61 / Getty Images/Westend61

u/Quietly_dangerous  

"There weren't 'female' proportioned crash test dummies until 2022." 

u/EasternStress2243  

11. "Okay, 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."

Tanja-tiziana, Doublecrossed Pho / Getty Images

u/Catwymyn  

12. "Lots of public toilet cubicles — never enough room for sanitary bins."

Lucy Lambriex / Getty Images

u/Elmaccas  

13. "I had a baby and we used bottles to administer formula. The numbers and measurement indicator lines were in white. WHITE."

Vera Vita / Getty Images

u/TheRedWoman00

14. "Hiking backpacks with a breast strap."

Westend61 / Getty Images/Westend61

u/Sternenschweif4a

"Lol I love backpacking but explicitly avoid taking any photos with my pack on because when wearing it properly, my boobs basically get squished into my belly and it looks like I’m halfway through a Play-Doh extruder." 

u/_Visar_

15. "So this is pretty niche, but I'm a fencer and the chest protectors that people with breasts are required to wear are shaped like Barbie's boobs. I wrote a whole article about it which went absolutely viral in fencing spaces. We're working on a redesign but it's very hard to engineer something that works for all people and doesn't cost three times more."

Artur Didyk / Getty Images

"They don't fit right and they don't scale well for larger people AT ALL (but they also don't scale well for small people). They are required because getting poked in the boobs really hard can give you a lump (not cancer, still bad). In the survey we did afterwards we also learned that they contribute to discomfort and dysmorphia among trans and nonbinary folks, and they lead to stupid comments and sometimes bullying among kids and teens." 

u/EpeeLizM

16. "Tampons, considering they didn't think to test them with actual blood until last year."

Isabel Pavia / Getty Images

u/h2otowm 

17. "Tampons in a cardboard applicator."

Apugach / Getty Images

u/tigerclawwwwwwwwwwww

18. "Leggings [or jeans] with a seam in the crotch."

Ksenia Shestakova / Getty Images

u/maridska

Shout out to u/LuinAelin and r/AskReddit for having this discussion.

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.    

Can you think of any other examples? Let us know in the comments below!