Look, it's common knowledge that men can have some pretty wild misconceptions about the female body - for example, I once knew a bloke who was genuinely shocked to discover that women have urethras. I could go on.
But AM co-host Ryan Bridge may take the cake for the most hilariously fallacious assumption about a woman's body, which he actually shared with the nation on Tuesday morning.
Discussing old wives' tales they believed as children, fellow co-host Melissa Chan-Green revealed that she had put stock in the superstition that bread crusts give you curly hair. Bridge then recalled the popular fable that if you hold a buttercup beneath your chin, and your neck glows yellow, it's conclusive proof that you like butter.
"Do you know one that's kind of embarrassing? I don't know if I should say," Bridge added, looking nervously over his shoulder at co-anchor Bernadine Oliver-Kerby.
Prodded by his co-hosts, Bridge continued: "I only learned the truth about this, in all honesty with you, a couple of years ago. My producer Nancy informed me that I had this quite wrong.
"You know when a woman is pregnant, she lactates? I thought that happened all the time," he admitted, prompting expressions of shock and horror from Chan-Green and Oliver-Kerby.
"I didn't realise [lactation] was just confined to that period [of time] when you were having a baby. I went through my whole life thinking [that] - I thought that's what bras were for."
"If that was the case, why would we be buying milk?" Oliver-Kerby quipped.
Attempting to hurry the segment along, Chan-Green interjected: "Let's go to the weather."
In case anyone else missed health class, here's a quick overview of what lactation actually is: lactation is the process of making human milk, which is secreted through the mammary glands located in the breasts. Lactation is hormonally driven and occurs naturally in people who are pregnant, beginning as early as a few weeks into the second trimester of a pregnancy. As oestrogen and progesterone levels rise, the body prepares for lactation by increasing the number of milk ducts in the breasts - those milk ducts then transport milk from the alveoli to the nipples.
And if anyone needs a quick lesson on what bras are, well, they're traditionally not designed to be worn when a woman is lactating, nor are they pads used to absorb bodily fluids. A bra, short for brassière, is a form-fitting undergarment that is primarily used to support the breasts and worn under clothing to provide additional coverage. Bras can also serve a range of other aesthetic purposes, such as making the breasts appear larger or smaller or creating cleavage.
Any questions?
