Boys get a pretty unfair rep for being the grossest of the species. The truth is, girls have the potential to be just as disgusting behind closed doors, especially when the man in our life is out of town (although, this can depend on how long you’ve been with him). When you’re first dating a guy, you like to pretend that you don’t poop, have never farted and don’t partake in any kind of behavior that goes beyond the realms of ‘ladylike.’

Once you’re in a long-term relationship, however, a lot (if not all) of your ladylike efforts tend to fall by the wayside. But that’s perfectly healthy - it just means you’re 100% comfortable to be two gross humans together, and there’s something quite beautiful about that. Whatever stage you’re at in a relationship though, there are certain things that you still can’t bring yourself to reveal in front of your partner. He probably doesn’t need to know how long you’ve left your bra unwashed for or hear you fart like you’re entering a contest.

This list might not be true of all girls, but most of us are guilty of a few of these weird habits at some point in our lives. Some girls may try harder than others to preserve the illusion that we’re all perfect, sweet, eyelash-fluttering flowers, but in reality... ain’t nobody got time for that! These are the sides of us that we’re not so cool about sharing with the one person who finds us cute and beautiful (but probably won’t once they’ve read this). From one gross girl to another out there, here are a few icky habits we’re not ready to admit to anytime soon.

Going Ages Without Washing Your Bra

Bras are an enigma. They count as underwear, but we don’t seem to count them alongside panties in the hygiene department. Underpants can maybe be worn twice tops (if you forgot to pack a spare pair, you can at least turn them inside out), but any longer is unthinkable and soon, we need to hurl them in the laundry basket in search of a fresh pair - so why on earth don’t we do this with our bras? There be the mystery element again.

Most of us will go weeks (dare I say… even months?) without changing our bra for no good reason other than laziness. Okay, our boobs aren’t the same as our downstairs area and we might also refrain from washing our bras on the regular because they’re delicate and pretty and we don’t want to ruin them, but this just sounds like an excuse to be gross. We’re fine with this, but it’s probably best our SO never knows that...

Letting Our Hair Brush Start To Resemble A Hamster

If like me, you’re a curly-haired gal, hair can get everywhere and I mean everywhere, but it mostly seems to concentrate on your hair brush when you have thick, frizzy tresses. When you see Disney heroines brushing their beautiful long locks, they set down their hairbrush, admire their pretty reflection and bound down the stairs to meet Prince Charming. In reality, one does not simply put a brush or comb down after use...unless you’re cool with scarring Prince Charming for life later.

Curly-haired girls always need to make a few trips to the waste basket to dispose of the matted clumps of hair tangled in the teeth of our brush. If we don’t, things quickly start to look like the above pic. When our hair brush could also be mistaken for a baby Chewbacca, it’s fair to say that we’re not quite on point with the whole ladylike life goals.

Putting Off Shaving Pits Until Absolutely Necessary

Some girls like to leave their armpit hairs as nature intended, and perhaps these ladies have it right. Maintaining smooth underarms on a regular basis is, after all, a gigantic pain in the ass. It grows back so quickly and we can sometimes get nicks from the razor, which in turn make us bleed and can then make any deodorant we use afterward sting like holy hell. If we’re being honest, it’s sometimes far easier to just put off the whole process until it starts to get noticeable.

Therefore, for some of us, winter is secretly our favorite time of the year. We can hibernate under jumpers and long-sleeve shirts and no-one is the wiser to our hairy underarms. It’s only when our underarm hair starts to feel like the woolen winter jumpers we’re wearing that we start to feel that it’s probably the right time for a shave!

Wearing The Same Pair Of Jeans For Days/Weeks

It’s a cliché that guys (especially teenage boys) will go weeks without wearing a fresh pair of jeans, but to be honest, girls do this too. Especially with that one favorite pair that goes with everything and is just too comfy to change. Short of getting a noticeable food stain on them or smelling as funky as the bottom of the laundry basket, we’ll keep our favorite pair of pants or leggings on for quite some time.

Again, this is like the whole bra enigma. Pants cover the bum, crotch and leg area (all of which can sweat!), but we don’t seem to care about getting weeks of use out of the same pair. If there’s no obvious reek to them, this is probably the kind of thing we can get away with in front of our other half. Most men wouldn’t even notice if we were wearing a new or old piece of clothing anyway, right? At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.

Letting Legs Get Prickly And Not Giving AF

Much like shaving the pit area, how often a girl shaves her legs is, of course, a personal preference. Yes, it can feel nice and luxurious for the millisecond we have smooth, soft pins but they seem to get prickly quick, so when our man’s out of town, it doesn’t seem worth it. (And even when your 'bae' is in town but aunt Flo is visiting you, it’s not worth it!).

In any case, the right guy is not going to care if your legs are silky smooth 24/7 - we’re only human and Mr. Right will love caressing your body, cactus legs and all. If there’s any excuse not to go through with this annoying beauty ritual, we’ll gladly take it. Exhibit B of why winter is the best season - thick pantyhose and knee-high boots means our sensitive pins get a long-earned vacation from the razor blade.

Using A Razor That’s Already Clogged With Hair

Speaking of our love/hate relationship with shaving, our weapon of choice can also become neglected somewhere along the line because we simply just don’t give AF anymore. If your boy stays over for the night, you might make a conscious effort to leave your lady razor in pristine condition. But pristine is a hard thing to achieve with any hair-removing implement. More often than not, hairs are protruding out of the blades like you spent the afternoon shaving a message into your dog’s back.

As much as we can’t be bothered to clean out the hairs or replace the razor until absolutely necessary, we don’t want our guys to think they’re secretly dating Wolverine, so we might put a fresh razor out as a decoy or hide the gross culprit behind a shampoo bottle. Either way, he does not need to see weeks worth of body hair collected in the razor blades. Ah, the things you do for love.

Not Washing Our Hair For As Long As Possible

In the presence of our boyfriend (especially at the dating stage), we feel better when our locks are squeaky clean and smell of our favorite fruity shampoo - particularly if there’s a chance he could smell our hair during a hug. But when he’s not in the picture, any desire to feel all feminine when it comes to our hair tends to go out the window real fast. Basically, the longest we can get away with washing our hair before we literally start to resemble the girl who crawls out of the TV in The Ring is cool with us.

Of course, thanks to the godsend that is dry shampoo, we can easily freshen up greasy hair between washes, but even then, we rely on this more than washing the damn stuff. (Fellow curly-haired ladies will side with me on this). Long unruly hair takes way too much effort. Hopefully, guys won’t notice that our hair hasn’t been washed in almost a week, but we’re not about to tell them that.

Wearing The Same Tampon or Sanitary Towel Way Longer Than You Should

In all fairness, sometimes this can’t be helped if we’re traveling a long distance and there’s no access to a bathroom, but for every other time - yup, this is just plain gross girl laziness and we all do it at some point at least once during our period. Whether you’re on a roll doing something productive or you just fancied binge-watching one more episode of your favorite Netflix show before getting up to change, you had your reasons and we fully understand.

If our boyfriend was to realize, on the other hand, that we were still wearing the same pad/ tampon in the time it took him to hit the gym, eat lunch and see a movie, the shame would be unbearable. Okay, not unbearable, but we wouldn’t feel very feminine about it. We can put it off and off but we eventually pay the price for getting too comfortable and it’s usually ruining yet another pair of panties.

Fart/Burp Loudly And With Pride

Depending on how long you’ve been with your man, you may already be guilty of this. For the most part, though, us girls don’t like to be too loud and proud with our bodily functions in the same way that guys do. And if we don’t feel comfortable doing it in front of our close friends, we’re probably not crazy about letting rip in front of you either. Yes, everyone does it, but we like to preserve an air of feminine mystique, not create an air of stink.

This is a whole other story when he’s out of the house, though. In private, we’re not afraid to let rip and feel proud about it too. Better out than in, as they say, so when he’s not around, we feel a strange sense of pride in how loudly we can belch or break wind. It’s grossly satisfying and it beats going about our day with trapped wind - who knows when that bomb could go off?

Letting Our Hair Strands Stick To the Shower Walls

It’s a fact of life that when we wash our hair, some strands can come loose with all the tousling and lathering action. So what do we do with the stray bits of hair? Gather them up after the shower and put them in the trash, of course. We try to use the same hygienic rule when our significant other isn’t around, but the gap between losing the hair and disposing of it is usually taken up by a very toddler-like activity: sticking our hair to the wall.

We wouldn’t dream of leaving our shower drain hair out in the open for him to see, but left to our own devices, loose hair means fun time. When you have long hair strands webbed in your fingers, your immediate reflex is to just stick them up on the tiled shower wall, like you were attempting to create a surreal and disturbing art exhibit. Don’t judge.

Going Weeks Without Washing Makeup Brushes

Using all the make-up tools under the sun is presumably an enjoyable past time for those who are making a YouTube career out of it, but for most of us, using makeup products (whether we apply makeup sparingly or on a daily basis) must face the inevitable and hugely tedious task of cleaning the make-up brushes at some point - one by one. Between eye shadow brushes, blenders, blush brushes and foundation brushes, the clean-up job is too much to handle!

To avoid bacteria and breakouts, it’s best to clean makeup brushes maybe twice a week, but even this doesn’t always scare us into cleaning up our act. If our boyfriend’s new this about us (oops), I doubt they’d be in much of a hurry to kiss us on the cheek with a mix of week-old powder, dead skin cells and god knows what else plastered on our face. Nasty.

Hang On To Panties With Stains On Them

Before you judge, this isn’t out of being cheap or as part of some messed up collecting hobby. If we’re honest with ourselves, girls, most of us will admit to holding on to stained underwear for one very good reason - to use them during our monthly visit. Because who wants to sacrifice a pretty pair of panties for that most gruesome and ungodly happening each month?

Accidents happen during our period and when they do, they can sometimes occur in a really comfortable and reliable pair. But we don’t want to lose them, so we let them be the martyrs to our cause during those precious few days. Men would like to believe we wear pretty, frilly numbers, even during our visit from Aunt Flo, but this just ain’t practical. Every girl has her crisis pair and they’re likely to be stained. (They're also likely never to be hung out to dry near another living soul).

Wearing Make-Up On Top Of Yesterday’s Makeup

Another gross make-up related habit of ours can sometimes be to wear make-up on top of the layer we applied the previous day. (This really depends on how much of a party girl you are, though, so those with introverted girlfriends can probably sleep easily). Nevertheless, we’ve all been there and done it at some point. Came home a bit too late and our bed was calling us more than the face cleanser was.

If we’re lucky, we don’t resemble the Joker the next morning and can actually get away with wearing yesterday’s makeup with a quick touch-up. A bit of face powder and top-up of lip gloss and we’re good to go. More good news is that last night’s eyeliner is now today’s sultry smoky eye. All the while, the man in our life never needs to know about how filthy and unfeminine we really are. #IWokeUpLikeThis #Literally...

Dig For Gold Like A Pro

Some of the more old-fashioned guys out there might like to believe that a woman’s sole way of dealing with boogers is to daintily blow their nose into a pretty scented tissue from their purse. But these guys are in for a world of shock. The truth is, women like to excavate for gold as much as dudes do, just don’t expect your girl to ever, ever blatantly do this in front of you.

It’s gross for sure, but we all do it and it’s another one of those little things that make us all human. Tissues are fine and all, but in some cases, only a finger will do and so girls will gladly use the tools God gave them to reach on up there and fish it out! Some women admit to mining for gold mostly while sitting in their car. Whether this is out of boredom or a lack of tissues nearby, we salute the girls who aren’t afraid to liberate their noses!

Let The Bathroom Get Messy During Our Monthly Visit

Relax, by ‘messy’ we don’t mean recreating the final sequence in Carrie, but let’s just say, we don’t leave the bathroom in the best shape when we’re on our period. In between nausea and painful cramps during our time of the month, we don’t feel all that motivated to keep things nice and tidy at the scene of the crime. There may even be times when we forget to flush. Oops!

We can also be guilty of stuffing the bathroom trash can at max capacity with used sanitary products and putting off emptying it for as long as possible because we don’t want to get up once we’re comfy - and comfy doesn’t happen too often on our period! While it can be great to have your bae around when you’re feeling crappy, it’s kind of nice to have the place to yourself. It’s also for the best that he never sees what goes down in the bathroom you share together.

Sources: Bustle; Buzzfeed; Netmums; Metro.