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That’s Not Very Ladylike is the podcast for every woman who was told to be polite, stay calm, or stop being so dramatic, meanwhile her hormones, boundaries, and sanity were quietly falling apart.
Hosted by Tracey Willingham, licensed social worker and the voice behind That Hormone Girl™, each episode starts with one rule: Ladies don’t…and then they do it anyway.
Together, we unpack the unspoken expectations, the emotional labor, the generational BS, and the hormone chaos modern women are carrying and we get honest about what it actually takes to feel like yourself again.
If you’re ready to question the rules, trust your body, and stop shrinking to make everyone else comfortable, you’re in the right place.
You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome to another episode of That's Not Very Ladylike. So some warning upfront, this episode does include a small discussion about sexual abuse. Nothing graphic. It's more the mention of it.
Tracey:However, it can be heavy and activating for some listeners. So if this topic is tender for you, please take care of yourself. It is okay to skip this episode, pause it, come back when you feel ready. I also want you to know that if you've experienced sexual assault or abuse, what happened to you was not your fault, and you are not required to carry that alone. So if you're in The United States and you want to talk to someone confidentially, support is available 20 through the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
Tracey:And you can call them at 800656 which is (800) 656-4673. Or you can chat online at r a I, n as in Nancy, n as in Nancy, dot org. So it's like rain with an extra N. You don't have to know what to say. And all you have to do is just talk.
Tracey:So this episode is ladies don't get mad at their doctors. They second guess their own bodies. So here's the rule most women learn without anyone ever saying it, maybe even necessarily out loud. We don't get mad at doctors because we shouldn't challenge, we shouldn't push back, and we certainly should not raise our voice or show frustration. We are to stay polite, grateful, and reasonable Because we are taught that doctors are the authority and their bodies are the problem to be explained.
Tracey:And when something doesn't feel right women don't get angry. We just get real careful. So we start thinking maybe I didn't describe it well enough. Maybe I am making it up. Maybe it is just stress.
Tracey:Maybe this is just part of getting older. And then you begin to replay the appointment in your head instead of questioning the conclusion. Because getting mad feels risky. Because mad is going to get you labeled. Mad gets you dismissed.
Tracey:And mad, well, it's going to show up in your medical notes in your chart. So instead of trusting our bodies that we live in every day, women start negotiating with themselves. And the louder the authority in the room, the quieter the inner voice becomes. So my story today, usually I have very fun ones and very funny and this one is very serious. But I share this story sometimes when I've been invited to give talks before because I think it's so important.
Tracey:It's not that I necessarily want to just put my life story out there but this story has impacted so many people in the room. I've heard so many stories of experiences, which is really disheartening to me. I would hope the world would be doing better, but also sometimes healing happens and just hearing that it's happened to someone else. So I'm going to tell this story very carefully because it really matters to me. So years ago, I needed birth control.
Tracey:And that was it. That was the reason for the visit. And I just want to say this once because while this is a big component of the story, I don't want to go into the details of sharing it. But all I want to say is that for the context of this story, I am a survivor of sexual abuse. And I don't really need to tell that story here, but it helps with the context of what you're about to hear.
Tracey:So I was already nervous about the exam because of that history. And I mean, let's just be honest, female wellness checks, they're not delightful. We don't have the best tools. I mean, really feel like we've come up with like Roomba vacuum cleaners and we can't come up with a better way to do a gynecological exam. But I had specifically requested a female doctor and no one had told me that day that things were going to be different.
Tracey:So I got called back, I got undressed, I was on the table, and a male doctor walked into the room. And already we got a problem because there was no explanation, no consent check, and no pause. It was lay down, stirrups thrown out, let's go. And my body locked up and I couldn't relax. I was tense.
Tracey:I was scared. And instead of stopping, or maybe I don't know if the medical world had taken five seconds to look at me as a patient and a human being on that damn table and asking me some questions or just slowing down for five seconds. But no, No. Their solution was, let's get several nurses in here to pin her down on the table so we can get this exam done because I have a full calendar today. I started crying.
Tracey:I started begging them to stop, and they didn't. They then left the room. And so then you would think, oh, thank goodness, Tracy. You got to get dressed. No.
Tracey:They brought my fiance, now my husband, into the room because they thought, well, he will calm her down. And I didn't wanna stop the appointment. I just didn't. I just wanted to do, like, what a lot of women do. I wanted to push through.
Tracey:And let's just name it. I'm okay with naming this about myself. I just wanted to be good. I didn't want to be difficult, and I didn't want to be defined by my past. So they tried again.
Tracey:And again, I begged them to stop. And then guess what? One word came out in the room, and that word was enough. And it wasn't from my mouth. It was from my fiance's.
Tracey:And guess what? When he said it, it stopped. And so you would think, gosh, that's not a really good story, Tracy. Next week, let's go back to some of those fun ones. But guess what, friends?
Tracey:That's not even the end of this story. Because as we were walking out of the room, a nurse turned to my fiance and said, air quotes jokingly, For your wedding night, wine. Lots of wine on your wedding night if you plan to get lucky. Let that sit for a minute. I was young.
Tracey:I was shaken, and I didn't have the language yet to understand what had just happened to me. I internalized that visit. And let me tell y'all, I'm in my forties, almost fifties now. I didn't understand that visit even now until my forties. I mean, I understood it, but boy, did I really get it in my forties.
Tracey:Because here's what I thought as a young, young woman. Something's wrong with me. I must be the problem. And I didn't know in that moment, really. I mean, I knew some, but I didn't really know what happened was inappropriate.
Tracey:I didn't know that I certainly had rights within the medical field and I did not know at the time that that was reportable. I have had a career that has looped in with the medical world for almost most of my career. So let me tell you that I know now what my rights were. I didn't know that the exam room isn't really the place for jokes, coercion or commentary about my body or my future sex life. And while I wish I could say my relationship with health care magically improved after that, it didn't.
Tracey:I still have three other deeply problematic medical visits that I could share with you. And I want to name this, we're going to probably mention it again later in this episode, but let's just we got to name this at a level that isn't always discussed. I am a white woman. And with that white woman becomes so much privilege. The idea that I could even think about making reports, all those things, that there would probably not be a note about me being difficult in my medical record.
Tracey:And we have to be aware that if this is happening to someone who has access to privilege, then when our sisters of different sexual orientation, different skin color, different whatever, say what happens to them, their experience is real. It deserves to be validated. And I guarantee you it is happening way more often and out of frequency and at levels that should disturb us all. So let's just lay that out there. But why this story matters is because of what didn't happen that day.
Tracey:No one stopped and asked, Is there something in your history that might be making this exam difficult today, Tracy? And no one paused and thought, this is a very strong response. Like, maybe we should take a break. No one even thought in the room that there might be some trauma. And here's the other thing.
Tracey:Some of you might be saying, well, I mean, you probably could have just said something like, hey, guys, I got a past you should know about. But why? Why is it always the victim who has to speak up? Why do we not catch the big clues in the room? So I didn't know this then, but I know it now.
Tracey:And so I'm going to say it. So in case you don't know it, you know it now. So that day, I had the right to not be mocked, not before, not during, not after an exam. I had the right to be informed of a provider change before I was undressed or on the table. I had the right to decline a male physician without explanation or justification.
Tracey:I had the right to my request to be stopped, honored immediately, and not only when a man said it. I had the right to revoke consent at any time, even mid exam. I had the right to have the physician pause the visit and ask basic trauma informed questions when my response was clearly not typical. I had the right to not be restrained or coerced for the sake of getting it done. I had the right to not only file a complaint with the practice manager, but also the hospital and clinic system and the medical board.
Tracey:I had the right to expect leadership to act not to defer to physician power. And I had the right to be referred for support after a traumatic medical encounter occurred without being required to relive or explain my abuse time after time. And I didn't know any of that then. And that lack of knowledge cost me years of second guessing my body and my reactions. So I'm not telling this story to scare you.
Tracey:And I'm also not saying it has to be this dramatic for you to be upset with your health care provider. But I'm telling it because this is how women learn to second guess their bodies. And it's because we were taught to override ourselves to keep systems comfortable. And that is not acceptable care. And I want to say something so clearly here, and this is my opinion, but I am going to stand by it.
Tracey:Every time a woman is dismissed, mocked, questioned, over medicated, under medicated, under researched, or treated differently because of their skin tone, sexual orientation, body size, or lifestyle choices, every time a woman is not believed, every time she is labeled in her chart as noncompliant, difficult, or too much, all of that to me lives on the same spectrum as the story I just shared with you. And before some of you start typing your emails like, really, Tracy, me asking for a treatment plan that doesn't start with medication is the same as that traumatic story? My answer is always going to be a resounding yes. Not because the experiences are identical, but because the pattern is the same. A woman speaks, a system minimizes, and the woman is expected to absorb the cost quietly.
Tracey:And I am not saying the health care system has to give us everything we want because that is not how medicine works. What I am saying is at the very least, we should be heard, taken seriously, believed until proven otherwise, given clear explanations, offered options, not ultimatums, connected to supportive services when something is clearly not okay documented accurately in our medical records and we need to be included in medical research. And yes, this is going to be several upcoming episodes because that lights me up. We should be able to leave an appointment feeling like even if I didn't get exactly what I asked for, I was respected. And friends, that should not be a radical expectation.
Tracey:So there's a word people often use here autonomy. But I want to say it more plainly because sometimes those fancy words were like, I know when to use it. But then you're like, I don't know. What does it really mean? We should have a real say in what happens to our bodies.
Tracey:So we should be partners in our health care experience. We should not be looked at as an obstacle. So that doesn't mean the doctor has to agree with me. But guess what? I don't have to agree with you.
Tracey:But it does mean the doctor should at least, at the very least, engage with me. Explain, listen, consider, document. And when something doesn't add up emotionally, physically, behaviorally, can you just pause long enough to ask why? Because when women are repeatedly dismissed, the damage is cumulative and it doesn't just affect one visit. So what it starts teaching women is to doubt themselves, delay care, minimize symptoms, and stay quiet to avoid being labeled.
Tracey:And that is not a personal failure. That is a systems problem. And so I'm naming this because these moments, big and small, shape how women relate to health care for decades. They shape trust, they shape safety, they shape whether women come back at all. And none of us should have to earn basic respect by being easy, agreeable, or quiet.
Tracey:And the emotional impact and why this gets under my skin. And I want more women to understand, the most damaging part of being dismissed in health care is not the wrong diagnosis. It's not even the lack of treatment. It's what happens inside a woman afterward. Because when a woman isn't believed, our nervous system learns something.
Tracey:My experience is questionable. My body might be lying to me. I need someone else to confirm what I feel. And once that belief sets in, it spreads. So women start preparing for appointments like a performance.
Tracey:They rehearse, they bring notes, they downplay symptoms so it doesn't seem as dramatic. We emphasize productivity so that we seem credible. And then you leave the visit and think, I should have explained it better. And this is not a communication problem, my friends. This is self trust being slowly trained out of someone.
Tracey:And here's the part we don't name enough. When women repeatedly aren't believed, they don't just lose confidence in health care. We lose it in ourselves. So they stop knowing what's bad enough. They wait longer to seek help.
Tracey:They normalize pain, exhaustion, anxiety, dysfunction as personal failure. And it's because we've been taught that our internal signals need external approval. That kind of doubt changes how women live. It makes them quieter, more cautious, less likely to take up space. And many women listening right now didn't realize that this even had a name.
Tracey:They thought, well, this is just how it is. So I want to slow down here because this part matters. And for some of you, it may be the first time these dots connect. So for most of medical history, women's bodies were not the standard. They were the exception.
Tracey:So medicine was built around male bodies, male symptoms, and male pain responses. When women didn't fit those models, the system didn't adapt. Women were just ignored or blamed. Their pain was labeled emotional. Their symptoms were minimized.
Tracey:Their distress was more of a psychological nature instead of being investigated. And that's where the idea of hysteria actually came from. And while we like to pretend that word is outdated, the thinking behind it has never left our history, ladies. And here's what that looks like today. Women in The United States are prescribed antidepressants at more than twice the rate of men.
Tracey:And it's not because women are inherently more depressed, but because when women present with distress, the system is far more likely to treat it as emotional rather than ask deeper questions. So research shows that even when women and men report the same symptoms, women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety and given medication as the first line of response. And that is not care that is categorizing. And sadly, it doesn't stop there. More than half of women report believing that gender discrimination in health care is a serious problem.
Tracey:And about one in five women say they've been outright ignored or dismissed by a health care provider. Women also experience longer delays in diagnosis than men for many conditions, meaning more time in pain, more uncertainty, and more self doubt before anyone takes them seriously. And here's a statistic that should stop us in our tracks. For decades, medical research relied primarily on male subjects, which means women's bodies, how we experience illness, how we metabolize medication, how symptoms show up were understudied or not studied at all. So when women feel like the system doesn't quite know what to do with them, you're not imagining it.
Tracey:The system has not been built with us in mind. And this history, it hasn't disappeared. It's just gotten quieter. So the language softened, the white coats stayed clean, but the assumptions remained. Women are still more likely to be doubted.
Tracey:We're more likely to be over medicated, under researched, told it's stress, anxiety, or just part of life. And the discrepancies increase so much more dangerously if you are a woman of color, if you are LGBT, if you are disabled, if you are a woman in a larger body. So once you see that, it becomes much harder to blame yourself for why you leave appointments feeling small, confused, unsettled because this was never about you not explaining yourself well enough. It was about walking into a system that was never taught to fully trust women in the first place. So here's the free frame I want to offer and this is important.
Tracey:This issue is not that women need to become better advocates. The issue is that women have been taught to believe their self trust is optional. So we've been conditioned to think that calm compliance is maturity, that politeness equals credibility, and that if we're just clear enough, patient enough, pleasant enough, the system will respond. But that does not guarantee care and compliance has never guaranteed safety. So reframing this doesn't mean you walk into every appointment ready to fight.
Tracey:It means you walk in knowing this, my experience matters even if it's inconvenient. It means recognizing that frustration, confusion, or anger after a visit is often information, not attitude. And it means beginning to trust that the discomfort you feel when something doesn't add up is not something to override, it's something to pay attention to. So if this were to be said, if this were allowed to be said, it would sound like something about this doesn't feel right to me. I'm not comfortable moving forward without more explanation.
Tracey:I'd like to understand my options. I don't feel heard right now. I need this documented in my chart. Notice how none of those are aggressive. They're clear, grounded, and reasonable.
Tracey:And yet many women hesitate to say them because they've learned that being clear can come with consequences. But silence, it comes with consequences too. So here's our reflection. When was the last time you left an appointment feeling smaller? What symptoms have you minimized before anyone else had the chance to?
Tracey:Where have you learned to doubt your body instead of trust it? And what would it feel like to believe yourself just a little sooner? Because awareness is not confrontation. It's the beginning of repair. And for many women, this is the first time that you are realizing, Oh, it wasn't just me.
Tracey:So let's close this week with women weren't taught to second guess their bodies because it was logical. We were taught that because it keeps systems moving smoothly. But smooth systems do not always mean safe systems. And efficient care is not the same thing as humane care. You are allowed to question.
Tracey:You are allowed to pause. You are allowed to expect respect. And choosing to trust yourself again, even slowly, even imperfectly, that's not defiance. That's dignity. And that is the most unladylike thing of all.
Tracey:Thanks for joining me today for that's not very ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice. And help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl. And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.