The cover of Martha Stewart Halloween magazine is ghoulish all right. The pink-ish eye makeup and purple lipstick are way goth. Cleary, Martha peeped our 8 Starlets Who’ve Gone Goth slideshow and wanted to join in! [BUST Magazine]

Oh, how I begged Mom to pay extra money for that totally ‘80s laser background on school portraits. She said always said “no” because, clearly, she was SO MEAN. Twenty years later, I’ve got nothing to submit to the We Have Lasers blog (***mullet warning***). Rats! [We Have Lasers!!!!!!]

If Tyra Banks can share with everyone on “The Tyra Show” when she got her first period—during 11th grade, at her dad’s house—so can The Frisky editors. I’ll start!

Mine came the summer after 7th grade on the second morning of sailing lessons at the local country club. (Shut up, I’m a WASP.) One the first day of obnoxiously preppy sailing class, the students had to tread water in the pool for a few minutes to prove that we wouldn’t drown if the boats capsized. But my Blair Waldorf-ian self woke up the morning of the second class with blood in my underwear! Because I’m my mom’s baby, she majorly teared-up over me getting my period—so embarrassing! So I just snatched the pads from her and hissed that I didn’t want to talk about it. Mom had no chance to teach me about tampons and I didn’t ask!

But I spent the next several days of sailing class terrified we’d have to go in the pool again, or my boat would capsize and I’d get wet, and everybody would know I was wearing a big, soggy pad. To this day, that’s pretty much all I remember about sailing lessons! I didn’t use a tampon for the first time until I was 16 (during a performance of “The Vagina Monologues” of all places). Alas, by then, my sailing days were over.

I’m not the only Frisk-ette with a slightly tragic first period story. Our tales of tampons and trauma, after the jump.

See you at 10 p.m. EST for another super exciting—uh, hopefully—episode of “P-Run”!

Grandly overstating their relevance, Sarah Palin and Paris Hilton will have quotes included in the venerable Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Palin’s quote? “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick.” We would have thought Hilton’s quote would be “That’s hot,” but for some reason it’s this: “Dress cute wherever you go, life is too short to blend in.” [NY Daily News]—Deeeeep, man.

It’s back-to-school time! At universities, this time of year means a serious discussion about preventing sexual assault on campus. Yet most of the rape prevention focus is on making young women’s behaviors safer, says author Jaclyn Friedman, instead of informing young men there is zero tolerance against sexual coercion and rape. Friedman says young women are given messages like “Don’t hook up! Don’t dress provocatively! Watch your drink! Actually, don’t drink at all! Always stay with a friend! Don’t stay out too late! Don’t walk home alone!” But what about the guys? [American Prospect]

For weeks Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old South African runner, has been embroiled in a kerfluffle over her “real” sex. Rumors that Semenya wasn’t a woman spread after she won a gold medal last month, and the International Association of Athletics Federations ordered her to undergo DNA testing.

Semenya’s test results allegedly show she’s a hermaphrodite. According to reports, Semenya apparently has internal testicles, no womb or ovaries, and testosterone levels more than three times what the New York Daily News calls “normal female” levels. Excuse me for going all Women’s Studies Major on your asses, but can we talk about this?

I’ve had a lapse in judgment or two which have led to embarrassing acts of desperation in front of a man. But nothing I’ve done has even been quite so desperate (or completely nutburgers) as what Helen Sun did to her man: The 38-year-old woman allegedly slipped a Mickey in her husband’s Gatorade and then handcuffed herself to him!

Annie Le, a 24-year-old Yale grad student about to marry her Columbia University fiancée this weekend, has been missing since Tuesday. Le left behind her purse with her cell phone, credit cards and money, police in New Haven, Connecticut, say. On the day she went missing, Le used her Yale student ID at round 10 a.m. to check into a laboratory where she’s working on her doctorate in pharmacology. Police are checking security cameras to see if Le, who is 4’11” and 90 lbs, was in the building when it was evacuated at around 1 p.m. during a fire alarm. Here’s hoping Le is just a runaway bride with cold feet and she turns up OK. [NY Daily News]

Sexy young ladies in bikinis fighting with each other and dancing by a pool—sounds like every reality show, doesn’t it? But for nine women in Turkey, the promise of appearing on a “Big Brother”-style reality show for a Turkish TV station turned out to be a trap. Police said two months ago, nine young women, between the ages of 16 and 24,  responded to an ad for reality show contestants by going to a villa in the town of Riva thinking they’d be filmed for the program. But after signing a contract that banned the women from any outside contact, which threatened a $33,000 fine if they left the “filming” sooner than two months, the women realized they’d been duped by predators. Scar-y.

Meanwhile, the women’s family members also thought the no-contact rule was fishy, so they alerted the police. When cops charged into the villa, they learned four people who kept them trapped allegedly have sold naked pics of the women on the internet. So creepy. It’s unbelievable that some sick individuals would prey on women like that. (Not that the fact that some people want to get famous by wearing bathing suits and cat fighting isn’t disconcerting, too.) [BBC]

In “bonnet books,” as Amish romances are called, the author’s idea of a sexual climax is typically a few (sinful!) kisses spread throughout 300 pages. Sounds hawt, huh? But Amish romances, such as ones by Beverly Lewis, Wanda Brunstetter, and Cindy Woodsmall, are selling by the millions. Says Barnes & Nobel book buyer, Jane Love, “It’s almost like you put a person with a bonnet or an Amish field in the background and it automatically starts to sell well!” [WSJ]

Yet “bonnet books” surely have more readers than just God-fearing folks who churn their own butter. (I’ve seen the books on the Borders’ shelves shopped by my fellow Connecticut suburbanites and, trust me, those people are pretty depraved.) I guess temptation, forbidden love and scandal—whether with vampires, NASCAR drivers, or the Amish—appeal to everybody!

After the jump, a few sexy, saucy bits from Amish romance novels that’ll have your bonnet all tied up.