By Sasha Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: September 12, 2012
When I was 14, I had my first period. I grew up, like every girl in my culture, in a place where periods fall into the category of body functions that are considered disgusting, alongside things like defecation and passing wind.
Though I was given the (quote-unquote) talk, I didn’t know my body well enough to know where exactly to position the pad, so I had my first leak as well. How was I supposed to know where the blood came out?
This confusion, and—especially at that age—painful embarrassment I experienced should be blamed on this weird hush-hush, snicker-snicker thing going on about periods.
It’s the woman’s curse. Although, I’ve discovered that the curse isn’t the period itself. Women do feel physical discomfort before and during their periods, as well as hormonal changes. But the real curse is the way we are treated as women all the time, with the excuse of that one time of the month.
Firstly, why are periods such a shameful topic? Commercials portray it like some terrible thing – but not if you purchase their product! Then you can dance and laugh with your boyfriend. The tampon and pad commercials rely on making periods seem like an extremely uncomfortable or heavy flowing situation. Meanwhile medicinal companies rely on exaggerating intensity of the physical discomforts – the pain, bloating, cramps and aches.
If I didn’t have periods myself, I’d likely think you couldn’t even function physically (without the right products) on your period. The shame women have in these commercials, before using the products, is very evident.
But that’s only one piece of the picture we’ve got wrong. The second piece of it is the idea that women are not rational while menstruating.
Periods don’t make us crazy. It makes us impatient and irritable. Impatient and irritable is nowhere near irrational. This means, when we become angry about something, it is not about something we wouldn’t consider annoying in the slightest another time of the month. We are becoming angry about something that does bother us – but another time of the month we would perhaps have more patience, and just point it out, or even ignore it.
But the fact that the world seems to think we’re off our rockers when having or about to have our periods gives them an excuse to dismiss us all the time. Disrespect us; belittle our concerns, opinions, emotions. Oh, she’s just probably going to have her period soon.
Women even get fooled into believing it themselves. Read the caption on Cosmopolitan a few issues back? “When Your Period Makes You Cra-a-zy.” Apparently we can’t make decisions while on our periods. And it’s a twisted mind game that so many people, including women, believe.
Gloria Steinem, a great American Feminist, wrote an essay that posed the question: how would men spin it if they were the menstruating sex?
Her point is clear: as the dominant gender insistent on maintaining superiority—however deluded the reasoning is to maintain it—menstruation would provide males a wealth of reasons why men are inherently better than women.
“Menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event,” Steinem writes. “Men would brag about how long and how much.”
“Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.”
Instead of using periods and PMS as reasons why women are hyper-sensitive and shouldn’t be in power positions—recalling, for example, the 2008 US elections in regards to Hillary Clinton—Steinem writes that men would use their ability to menstruate to their advantage.
“Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (‘men-struation’) as proof that only men could serve in the Army (‘you have to give blood to take blood’), occupy political office (‘can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?’), be priest and ministers (‘how could a woman give her blood for our sins?’) or rabbis (‘without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean’).”
It took me a while after that first time when I was 14 to figure out that a period is just a body function. All that extra meaning is just bullshit. For most women, it isn’t a disabling five days of physical and emotional torture.
We should be okay with talking about it, the reality of it. It’s normal. It’s not grotesque. It doesn’t turn us into nutters. A period is only ever just a period.
