I’ve never been ashamed of being a woman, though many times in my life people have shamed me for being one.
A few days ago, before class, I hopped on an EE Rutgers bus to go downtown to the RiteAid in New Brunswick. It was almost that time of the month, so I was stocking up on tampons, pads, Midol, and other necessities. When I got on the bus back to my dorm, I could feel the stares from my male peers as they warily looked at the content in my bag.
I remember one time I was talking to one of my guy friends and he asked me how I was doing. “I’m fine,” I said, “Just hurting because of my cramps”. His face became immediately flushed as if he was going to be sick. “Let’s just talk about something else,” he said, brushing off my comment and my pain.
Every time something like this happened to me, I thought to myself, “it’s not a big deal. It’s just blood.”
But then I realized, to a lot of people, it is a big deal--but only because of their subconscious, preconceived notions that menstruation equals something negative.
In reality, it’s just some blood trickling down a uterus.
I recently read an excerpt from Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s "The Body Project." In the book, she claimed that the late 19th century was an era when “smaller families became economically desirable and higher standards of personal decorum required control over bodily functions." (p. 13).
Obviously, because of this newfound propriety over oneself, mothers found it more difficult to teach their daughters about their changing bodies. Therefore, even to women, menstruation became a cultural taboo. The lack of communication subconsciously fed the idea to young, pubescent girls that periods were something to be feared and something that shouldn’t be discussed in public.
It wasn’t just about the personal decorum, though. Because smaller families became more desirable, sex was subconsciously looked down upon in families. Because of this, a new fear of sexual relations sprung in people’s minds. By keeping quiet about personal sexual matters, many women thought they were protecting their daughters’ innocence, when in actuality, they were just fostering sexual repression.
Apparently, most people thought that the less civilized a nation was, the more libidinous they were and the younger in age girls got their periods. For example, scientists had put out theories that white American girls went into menstruation later because their society was more civilized, whereas black girls in America menstruated early because they stemmed from a society that was more primitive. American white families, however, really just wanted to keep their daughters away from “sexual danger”, which could possibly experience as they enter into womanhood.
Obviously, with modern science, we know all of this information to be completely false. However, we can’t help but continue to think the same way about periods: that they’re gross, humorous, or something to be looked down upon.
Brumberg also states that a late 19th-century medicine professor, Dr. Albert F. King claimed that, “a woman’s natural state is pregnancy”. Why he was making assumptions about women like that, I don’t know, but most men (then and now) feel entitled to talk about women’s bodies like they own them. They feel as though they have dominance and dictation over bodies that aren’t even their own. So, a woman’s only place in society was to bear children. If they were menstruating, they were not helping the human population prosper and were failing at their job in society. Again, this gave people more reasons not to talk about menstruation like it was a normal thing in a woman’s life.
But, in the late '90s when Judy Blume came out with her first published book, "Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret," people were shocked. It was even banned in a lot of states because of its content about a girls’ journey through and menstruation.
However, I’m the type of person who stresses representation. Where would most of these little girls learn about what it’s really like to go through puberty and finally have their long-awaited periods? It’s evident that the sexual education system in schools and at home were failing, so of course, many pre-pubescent girls turned to these “coming of age” books for insight.
Brumberg brings up something interesting at the end of her third chapter in her book about menstruation: when you read classic books that center around women (i.e. "Little Women", "Jane Eyre", etc), they never mention menstruation.
Sure, it could be the mere zeitgeist, but these were books for women by women. Girls should talk about their periods and shouldn’t be ashamed to. Talk about anything sexually related shouldn’t be subject to only be behind closed doors or as whispers in bathrooms.
Humans are naturally sexual creatures–sex is found everywhere in nature. Why be so "hush hush" about it when we really should be embracing it? Teach more girls about their periods earlier, teach teenagers about contraceptives, and teach young adults to get regularly tested for STD’s.
SEXUAL EDUCATION NEEDS TO BE IMPLEMENTED IN OUR DAILY LIVES.
When we’re scared about talking about these critical things in our lives, we let down an entire generation of children who will grow up and fail their children, and so on.
