My gawd, it sounds like a campy horror flick, doesn’t it? But yes, there are still adults dumb enough to worry about their daughters using internal absorbents to mop up their monthlies:
Oh lordy, lordy, good Gordie. I’m so old I remember when Tampax Slenders first came out, and their label prominently read “Slim enough for a virgin to use”. Which was mortifying for me, but reassuring for my mom, because I was 12, already bleeding like a slaughtered ox just six months after my first period, and embarrassed of waddling around in maxi-pads as thick as my baby sister’s Pampers. And my mom was worried that I hadn’t “grown out”, as she put it, enough to use the bigger stuff.
I found out a few months later, when the skinnies weren’t cutting it and I started stealing her Super Pluses (which are still much narrower than any adult penis), that SHE was wrong, too. Nothing got broken; in fact, there was probably nothing there to break in the first place. Nothing broke the first time I had sex, many years later, either. There was no bleeding and very little pain, and what pain there was, was from nervousness on my part. A subtle shift in position fixed that. (I do, however, credit tampon use with helping me learn how to relax those all-important muscles.)
The hymen isn’t a hermetic seal that breaks with the first penetration by whatever; it’s a vestigial product of embryonic development that some of us have already evolved out of altogether. And it’s literally nothing to worry about, because on some of us, it’s literally NOTHING!
As for the vagina, it’s elastic. It can stretch to accommodate everything from a tiny tampon to a ten-pound fetus. It’s not wise (or, if you’re another person, legal) to force anything into it, but as long as the muscles aren’t clenched in fear, you can safely and comfortably insert whatever you need to in order to have a discreet time of month. The same in 12-year-old virgins as in their 40-year-old mothers.
It’s so funny how some people, who should have learned them early, forget all these things when THEY become parents. How on Earth do they manage to conceive children amid so much ignorance?
This, people, is why sex-ed belongs in schools. Learning it at home from your folks is often no better than learning it behind the bike sheds from your buddies. And being forced to learn certain things entirely on your own, as I was, is no good, either.