The Post-Orgasm Cry Nobody Talks About 😭

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Hi friend, if you're new here, welcome to Girlhood — the group chat we should have had all along. This week, we're asking whether cigarettes are actually back (they're not, but the mood makes sense), sitting with the fact that nearly half of women have cried after sex and apparently nobody's been talking about it, commiserating over the period flu, and making the case for why Women's Health Month deserves more than a hashtag. Grab a beverage and settle in.

🚬 So...Are Cigarettes Really Back?

Don't judge me, but my favorite trend on the internet right now is the whole notion that "cigarettes are back." Women aligning their chakras with a smoke and a cocktail, girls lighting up and simply not giving a f*ck, comment sections full of people saying how refreshing it is to see someone rebelling against the optimizing, just for a second.

Even Gwyneth Paltrow deadpanned on Good Hang with Amy Poehler that when she's 87, she's going to start smoking again — which, honestly, is the most relatable thing Gwyneth Paltrow has ever said.

But are cigarettes actually back? Not really. According to the CDC, only about 10% of U.S. adults currently smoke, down from over 40% in the 1960s, and women have been leading the charge to quit faster than anyone else. So no, we are not lighting up en masse. This is not a movement; it's a mood.

And I think I understand the mood.

Yes, we know cigarettes cause cancer. Yes, they impact fertility and accelerate aging and do approximately zero good things for the human body — nobody's arguing otherwise. But I think what's really happening here is a pressure-release valve, a collective, slightly unhinged exhale from women who are exhausted by the never-ending performance of being "well."

So when someone lights a cigarette on camera and looks genuinely unbothered, what people are responding to isn't the cigarette. It's the idea that you could just exist in your body for a hot minute without running a full diagnostic on it (which, if you've spent any time in the wellness space lately, honestly sounds like a vacation). 

Nobody's actually advocating for smoking. But if the alternative is stressing yourself into a cortisol spiral trying to live forever, you start to wonder: would a martini really kill you? Probably not... and sometimes that's enough. 

🔍 Ask Clara: Does vaping cause infertility?

 😭 Crying After Sex Is More Common Than You Think

I have never once, in my 37 years of life, cried after sex. Not after good sex, not after bad sex, not after the kind that genuinely moves you. It just hasn't happened. So when I sat down to write about post-orgasm tears, I assumed I was writing for a pretty small group.

Then I found the numbers.

According to a 2015 study published in Sexual Medicine, 46.2% of women have experienced post-coital dysphoria (crying, sadness, or anxiety following otherwise satisfying sex) at least once in their lifetime. Nearly half, which I had to read twice to believe.

Here's what makes it more interesting than just an unexpected cry: it's not always emotional. During orgasm, your brain floods with oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphins. And then it's over, all at once. That shift can trigger tears that have nothing to do with how you feel about the person next to you, or whether the sex was good. Your nervous system just ran a sprint, and the body doesn't always know what to do with that.

My co-founder, Abby — sharp, unflappable, someone who has never once been at a loss for words (in the best way possible) — told me she cries after sex about 50% of the time. She'd never said it out loud to anyone except her husband. Which is kind of the whole point: something this common somehow never makes it into the conversation, not even between women who talk about everything. 

🔍 Ask Clara: Why do I feel so emotional after an orgasm?

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🤒 The "Period Flu" Is No Joke

Is the period flu real? Asking for a friend who just took two Motrin and set an alarm so she could nap between meetings.

As I've mentioned on numerous occasions, I never used to get a regular period. PCOS meant my cycle showed up whenever it felt like it, sometimes every 60 days, sometimes not at all. So when I tell you I just had my second "normal" cycle in a row, you'd think I'd be celebrating. And I am, truly. Except that both times, on cycle day 1, I could not get out of bed.

Not ideal when you have three little kids and are running a business.

Apparently, this is a thing. "Period flu" isn't an official diagnosis — which feels a bit like a personal attack — but it describes the wave of flu-like symptoms that can hit right before or during your period. Body aches, chills, nausea, and that trudging-through-mud fatigue where you can't tell if it's a cold, allergies, or just your uterus doing its thing. The culprit is prostaglandins, compounds your uterus releases to shed its lining (that occasionally go rogue and take the rest of your body down with them). And it's more common than anyone talks about. 

Painful periods are the leading cause of lost time from school and work among women of childbearing age, and about 10% are fully incapacitated for up to three days a month. So there are a lot of us out here, alarm set, horizontal, hoping nothing urgent comes up while we're snoring on the couch.

I spent years wishing for a normal cycle. Apparently I should have been slightly more specific.

🔍 Ask Clara: How do I know if my period pain is normal?

📣 Women Are Half the Country (Fund Us Like It)

May is Women's Health Month, which sounds celebratory... until you look at the numbers underneath it.

Seven to ten years. That's the average time it takes to get an endometriosis diagnosis. Not because endometriosis is rare — it affects roughly one in ten women — but because for decades, medicine wasn't actually built with women in mind. Women were excluded from clinical trials to "protect" potential pregnancies, which meant dosing guidelines, treatment protocols, and diagnostic criteria were built almost entirely on male bodies. We were, as Binto's founders put it, "treated as small men, or not treated at all." 

So many of us have lived this. We've sat in offices describing symptoms that were waved away. We've watched loved ones spend years fighting for diagnoses they deserved on day one. I have an autoimmune disease — women are up to four times more likely than men to develop one — and I can tell you firsthand that 'apparently we just didn't study that enough' is not a satisfying explanation.

This month, Rescripted is partnering with Binto to do something about it: a petition calling on the NIH and Congress to mandate proportional research funding for conditions that primarily affect women. It takes thirty seconds. The problem took decades to create.

xo,
Kristyn

🔍 Ask Clara: What conditions are more common in women than men?