By Lester Andrist
I remember walking to class one morning as a 10-year-old boy, and for no particular reason, my gaze drifted from the open door of my classroom to my right, just in time to catch a classmate exiting the girl’s restroom. It was a split second glance into the forbidden zone, and something fluttered in my stomach as though I was stealing a glance at a confidential file or listening in on a private conversation. Why, I wondered, was the mirror in the girl’s restroom twice as large as the mirror in the boy’s restroom? A more pressing question was to the nature and purpose of that large white box bolted to the side of the bathroom wall.
Whatever goodies that glorious white box dispensed, I decided that the facilities, and indeed the experience of using the girl’s restroom were irrefutably better than could be had in the boy’s restroom. Some time later, I pieced together enough information to conclude that the box held a supply of tampons or menstrual pads, which had something to do with women and their periods. As to how often girls used these soft cotton marvels of technological innovation was a complete mystery, and I knew even less about how they used them.
That fleeting glance of the white box that day stirred my curiosity, but somehow I intuitively understood that to broach the topic of women’s menstruation was to risk embarrassment, so I never brought it up. I eventually learned the basic mechanics of an average menstrual cycle, but it wasn’t until after high school that I developed some very close relationships with women, and through our conversations, I was finally able to name this bizarre mystique surrounding the topic of menstruation.
I’ve always been a curious guy, so it’s fitting that I became a sociologist. As a sociologist, I’ve recently been thinking about just how pervasive this fear of menstruation is in American society. I’m wondering why it exists at all. One could look at Hollywood movies as a rough gauge the ubiquity of the fear. The kinds of stories we transform into blockbuster movies, and even the jokes we tell in those movies, say a lot about our society. Take, for instance, the popular 2007 film Superbad, starring Jonah Hill as Seth. In one memorable scene, Seth finds himself dancing close to a woman at a party and accidentally winds up with her menstrual blood on his pant leg. A group of boys at the party spot the blood, deduce the source, and one by one, they buckle in laughter. Seth is humiliated by what is supposed to be an awkward adolescent moment, but he’s also gagging uncontrollably from his own disgust.
This film’s commercial success suggests it resonated with a broad swath of the American public. I would argue that the humor in this party scene worked in particular because it drew on widely shared ideas about menstruation as something capable of both contaminating and humiliating a person. We Americans laughed at this scene because from a cultural standpoint, we’re in on the joke. We understand the awkwardness.
Long before me, feminists have noted that the all-too-common fear of menstrual contamination and the shame of failing to manage the menstrual flow are deeply held ideas rooted in patriarchy. That some men involuntarily gag at the mere thought of menstrual blood is evidence that the natural human experience of menstruation has been successfully re-imagined in American society as a kind of pathology. But I think it is important to remember, that women bear the brunt of this ideology. After all, women’s bodies are pathologized, not men’s.
It’s important to note that this pervasive fear of menstruation also fuels a multi-billion dollar industry, which produces and markets hundreds of products designed to manage and even suppress menstruation (e.g., Lybrel and Seasonique). In an interview about her recent book, New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation, sociologist Chris Bobel nicely articulates the connection between menstrual anxiety and corporate profit:
The prohibition against talking about menstruation—shh…that’s dirty; that’s gross; pretend it’s not going on; just clean it up—breeds a climate where corporations, like femcare companies and pharmaceutical companies, like the makers of Lybrel and Seasonique, can develop and market products of questionable safety. They can conveniently exploit women’s body shame and self-hatred. And we see this, by the way, when it comes to birthing, breastfeeding, birth control and health care in general. The medical industrial complex depends on our ignorance and discomfort with our bodies.
Bobel’s analysis helps make sense of why I felt so certain at the ripe old age of 10 that I couldn’t ask anyone about the tampon dispenser on the wall. By then, I had already internalized the patriarchal notion that women’s menstruation is a potential source of shame, or at least that my interest in it would be shameful. Nearly three decades later, when discussing the topic with my students in the introduction to sociology class I teach, I invariably get asked why—given all we know about the natural, reproductive purpose of the menstrual cycle—do we persist in attaching shame and embarrassment to this experience? In order to understand why, I think we need to critically examine the way patriarchy is entangled with capitalism. As Bobel also notes, it is profitable to peddle the patriarchal idea that women’s bodies are potentially dangerous well springs of shame. Femcare companies and the advertising firms they hire devote enormous resources toward replenishing this well of menstrual anxiety, thereby ensuring women continue to purchase a host of products all designed with the intent of managing their menstrual flow or even stopping it all together.
Unfortunately, quelling the persistence of these very problematic ideas about women and menstruation is a tall order. If my argument is that it is untenable for advertising firms to effectively tell women they must use femcare products to avoid shame, then it is equally untenable for me—especially as a man—to tell women they shouldn’t use certain femcare products. Instead, my hope is that both women and men can become better educated consumers of the media and the messages it deploys.
Lester Andrist is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. In addition to writing his dissertation, he teaches an introductory sociology course and will soon be stealing as much time as he can for hiking and mountain biking. He’s a regular blogger and editor at The Sociological Cinema, which is a site he co-created to help sociology instructors engage their students with visual media.
The shame assigned to menstruation goes way beyond capitalist thirst for profit. In India for instance,it was common practice among Hindus till about a century or so ago, to segregate menstruating women in a secluded room of the house meant for that purpose, from which they were not allowed to even step out. Even today, it is a practice in an overwhelming number of Hindu households to not allow menstruating women to participate in festivals and other religious ceremonies. Such practices do not stem from capitalists’ need to market their products. On the contrary, in a country like India, where girls’ schooling is jeopardized by the onset of menstruation, access to sanitary napkins as well as toilets is sometimes all that it takes to ensure uninterrupted schooling. While I agree that access to both the above is conditioned by class structures, I think its throwing out the baby with the bathwater to ignore the enabling aspects of capital-fueled innovation. Rather than condemning it, it is much more important to think of ways to strip it off its capitalist moorings so as to make the technology more widely available so that more and more women are able to access it.
That was an interesting read.
Thanks for sharing this post, certainly made me think!
Very interesting!!
Very interesting. A tad over thought. I’ve never in my life felt shame about my period or that I should feel this way, and the capitalism that has brought me all of these really helpful products to manage my period, and function through it, is so welcomed! I know other cultures and countries might be different, but the capitalist America I grew up in, did not shame or manipulate anything for me. It just made my monthly time a little easier. If I’m brainwashed…so be it! I want all of that helpful stuff every month!
Never looked at things that way. It’s an interesting perspective – and one that I respect – but I do agree with Courtney that things are much better for women nowadays. Everything’s much cleaner thanks to all those products.
I definitely see the value in feminine hygiene products being produced by manufactures. I understand just for some people, having to clean out their menstrual cup or wash a soiled cloth pad isn’t their thing, so it’s fair for everyone to have options. I do agree that many manufacturers in North America really play it hard on women’s need to feel that menstruation needs to be “discreet” – that if a guy were to see your pad or tampon and RECOGNIZE it, that’d be a most horrific thing.
With that said, like the author of the article, I too was the little boy who always wondered what that little white box was in the girl’s bathroom. No one talked about it and it wasn’t until later into Grade 7 and 8 were the girls would noticeably try to be hush-hush about it whenever they needed to “use the white box”. Invariably, that leads me to wanting to know because hey, I was curious and why didn’t we get something cool like that?
Anything feminine however, let it be pads, tampons or liners – there is still very stale air within society about whether men should have “rights” to it or not. Think about the last time you saw a guy picking out panties, you likely thought he was, a) a pervert, or b) a crossdresser. Likewise, if my girlfriend/wife was buying out underwear for me, it’d probably look quite natural and no one would shoot her a second glance. I get my fair share of women avoiding me or giving me weird stares when I’m in the feminine hygiene aisle. When there are guys, usually they will avoid my gaze or grab-and-run as if being in that aisle is degrading. Certainly, it seems more ‘acceptable’ that women can be involved with ‘guy stuff’ but guys can’t be involved with ‘girl stuff’.
This type of attitude is passed from generation to generation and it’ll take many more to reverse it. I think if I were sitting at a food court, I’d rather hear a conversation about menstruation than about who was sleeping with who last night and all the details. Having grew up in a conservative family, the very thought of menstruation coming up in a conversation was naught. I learned through library books, research and the internet. In time, I opened up my interest in menstruation with my female friends who I was close with. Even today, I am careful about who I open such conversations with people it’s just not an “every day, everyone” subject.
Now I understand that periods are private female subjects and it’s rightful of them to feel they wouldn’t want to discuss it with a male. However, if we want to remove the taboo about menstruation, it truly does start from women, because they have to send out the right image to guys that they’re not ashamed about their period or that it doesn’t have to be something that is hidden. When guys start catching on that it’s ok to speak about it or to ask questions, then open and comfortable dialogue begins. If as a guy, I continue to see females who treat periods as a closed subject then it gives off vibes “against” periods. It easily translates to, “If even girls are embarrassed about it, then I should be embarrassed about it too!”
Positive thinking leads to positive action. When men are truthfully educated at both a biological and anecdotal level, it helps us see menstruation as a normal biological function, rather than some curse or embarrassment in life. I won’t doubt that menstruation can be an inconvenient thing, but it’s a very beautiful thing and both men and women should learn to cherish. Male education when it comes to periods shouldn’t just stop at the “acceptance” level such that, “Well periods happens and that’s all I need to know” but rather, give us an opportunity to learn more than scratching the surface. The more that these companies emphasize that menstruation and feminine hygiene needs to be discreet and unacknowledged to men, the more it sends us signals that we need to “feel bad” for women that they have a menstrual cycle and that we should see menstruation negatively because we don’t truly know the whole story behind it.
Thank you for the very thought out comment Prexus! It’s always great to hear a male’s perspective on menstruation, especially such a positive one. 🙂