The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of The University of Scranton.
Every girl remembers when in fourth or fifth grade a female teacher or their mom sat them down to explain your period. It was treated as this hush-hush thing that no one could know about. I’d already had my period for almost three months before my middle school’s capital “T” Talk, but I couldn’t tell any of my friends because it was gross, right? I thought, for some reason, that no man could or should ever know. It was a secret I had to keep. Perhaps that is why, the following year, when my dad caught me desperately trying to clean my crime-scene looking sheets before school, I thought he was part of some kind of “secret society” of men who somehow knew. Of course, whenever it came up, my dad called it “my cycle,” which always made me feel cool, like I was magic or something, but I now know he was just embarrassed to talk about it, to call it a period. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in high school that I realized it might be okay to talk about menstruation when a classmate sheepishly asked if I had a spare tampon.
Still, men never seemed to talk about periods, aside from my best friend, Ryan, who heard all about it thanks tohis older sister. He was completely comfortable with the topic, as unlike most girls I knew, his sister brought it up in conversation whenever she had it. Of course, It was nice because when I was in a ton of pain and not myself, he wouldunderstand why I felt sick, wanted to stay at home, or not eat lunch.
When I got to college, it was suddenly very normal for girls to discuss or complain about their periods; I would watch them make midnight runs for chocolate or pass around hot pads like hot potatoes. I felt more comfortable with mybody when I had my period because my friends understood. After all, no one was saying it was “their time of the month,” “their cycle,” or another metaphor for something that is at the heart of womanhood. We could say, very casually, “Oh, I’mon my period, so I’m craving chocolate,” or “I think I’m going to lay down because I have really bad cramps.” Suddenly, it wasn’t something I had to keep to myself; I wasn’t ashamed because it was normal to talk about it.
However, with that change among my female friends, I also assumed that most of my male friends were like Ryan and surely understood how menstruation worked. However, one day at dinner, all the girls in my friend group discovered our periods synced and happily discussed how we were bonding. One male friend then expressed his shock at how thiswas possible. It may be important to note that this friend is an EMT, meaning he is a medically trained professional who until that moment had no idea a woman’s period could sync with women around her. All our male friends gathered arounda phone to discover that scientists weren’t completely sure why this phenomenon occurs, my EMT friend exclaiming, “Now I know why they hung all those women in Salem!” Now, we tease him about it, but I think this story highlights something important. People don’t understand how periods work, mostly because we don’t talk about them, and as such, it becomes an odd or taboo thing that lives in metaphor. Of course, many of these knowledge gaps can be derived from the lack of research in women’s health, including why women’s periods can sync, but also a general taboo that our society has placed around talking about periods. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The taboo behind women’s periods masks the reason behind them, our ability to create, which makes us incredibly special. We literally create things and to do that we need periods; they are not something to be ashamed of, they give uspower. In this way, I do think in some ways that the idea of “womb envy” is real, as we live in a culture that tells us not to discuss our bodies, which are capable of such incredible things; these bodies are scary things to men intent on revoking women’s reproductive rights.
When we don’t talk about our periods, not only does it encourage general misinformation regarding women’shealth, but it also prevents women from feeling comfortable in their own bodies, as having to hide a natural function of your body only serves to hurt a woman’s confidence invalidate any pain she may feel. This “better not heard or seen”approach to periods hides and diminishes women’s pain, which is absurd; a 2016 study conducted by Professor JohnGuillebard found that period cramp pain is “almost as bad as having a heart attack” (Praderio).In case you think this only applies to a small number of women, a 2019 study by Kimberly A. Kho, MD, MPH reports that “primary dysmenorrhea,” the scientific term for severe, painful period cramps, affects 50 to 90 percent of women (Kho and Shields). Importantly, this study also notes, painful cramps are often “underdiagnosed, inadequately treated, and normalized even by patients themselves,” meaning that millions of women who are in extreme pain rarely receive medical relief and lack validation for their pain (Kho and Shields).
Comedian Sasheer Zamata sums this study up best when she says: Doctors are now saying that the pain we feel when we have period cramps is equivalent to the pain we feel whenwe have a heart attack. So, we’ve been enduring this pain for years and just going to work.
Buttoning up and going to work, cuz we’re trained that way. And I think these tampon commercials aredetrimental. They’re always like “Oh you’re on your period, don’t let that stop you. Get out there. Go surfing. Go play a sport! Get on a horse.” I don’t want to do that when I’m on my period. Stop trying to force me outside. I want to lay down. If you saw a man bleeding uncontrollably and having a four-day long heart attack, youwouldn’t be like “don’t let that stop you, get on a horse!”
Zamata’s humor serves to highlight an important aspect of women’s experiences; we are often forced to suffer throughour pain because society normalizes it. Women are expected to simply “power through” with no exceptions made by professors or bosses alike in terms of our pain. If more people understood how periods work and the pain they cause, I think our society might be more lenient in understanding when students or employees need a sick day if their period cramps are extreme.
Moreover, we need more studies about periods and women’s health because a lack of information, testing, andother resources is actively killing women. Why did it take until this year for researchers to discover that many tampon brands contain “measurable concentrations” of toxic metals including lead, arsenic and cadmium, all of which are linked to death and health problems such as “damaging the cardiovascular, nervous and endocrine systems; damaging the liver, kidneys and brain; increasing the risk of dementia and cancer and harming maternal health and fetal development” (Treisman). Lead author of the research study, Jenni Shearston, a postdoctoral scholar at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, states: “Despite this large potential for public health concern, very little research has been done to measure chemicals in tampons,” making it evident that had these products been appropriately regulated or tested, we could haveprevented much sickness for women globally (Treisman).
Further, if we can talk about these issues in a public forum, we can bring up the ways that having a period is costly for women. In many states, despite pads and tampons being necessary feminine hygiene products, they are taxed goods. In fact, a New York Times study found products marketed to women are 13% more expensive than those marketed to men. According to the nonprofit legal advocacy organization Period Law, this sneaky “pink tax” adds up to an estimated annual cost to female consumers of around $80 million! This is a staggering number, and I do believe that if more people knew the cost of simply having a period, not including birth control or anything else to moderate pain, lawmakers on the national and local levels would step in to help us.
So, talk about your period. Let’s call it what it is: not “a cycle,” not your “time of the month,” your period. Talking about periods serves to empower women’s bodies and I encourage my fellow female readers to embrace their body in all its facets. Our period is the byproduct of our ability to create, and that gives us full license to talk — and let’sface it –complain about it. We need to be able to advocate for ourselves by talking about the pain periods cause, becausein doing so, we will help to spur the acceptance of and progress in research we deserve. Period.
Works Cited
Kho, Kimberly A., and Jessica K. Shields. “Diagnosis and Management of Primary Dysmenorrhea.” JAMA Network, 19 December 2019, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jama.2019.16921?utm_campaign=articlePDF%26utm_medium=articlePDFlink%26utm_source=articlePDF%26utm_content=jama.2019.16921.
Praderio, Caroline. “Period Cramps Can Be More Painful Than a Heart Attack, Gynecologist Says.” Business Insider, 5 January 2024, https://www.businessinsider.com/are-period-cramps-more-painful-than-heart-attack-2018-3.
Treisman, Rachel. “A study found toxic metals in popular tampon brands. Here’s what experts advise.” NPR, 11 July 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/07/11/nx-s1-5036484/tampons-heavy-metals-study.