Claire K • England • 32
The story of my first period is part charming tale part feminist rant.
I grew up in a single dad family with an older brother and a younger sister. So when, at the very young age of 9, I went to bed early with a stomach ache and woke up having bled through my pajamas onto the bed sheets, I thought I was dying. Like Carrie in that shower my little mind popped. At this point in my young life I didn’t even know menstruation was a thing. Having not had anyone else who menstruates in my household I had no reference to it. Through my hysterics my dad’s response was a doddering “I’ll run you a bath and call the baby sitter.”
Hearing the words ‘you’re a woman now’ as a 9 year old is terrifying, what does that even mean!?!? Apparently it means a day off school to go shopping for an outfit and a meal out! I remember I chose a crushed velvet, leopard print dress with fishnet tights and wearing them with my Dr Martens and a ribbon I wore as a choker, a very 1998 look but alas one I absolutely wear today, cause hey, I’m a women now!
The next day my dad took me into school, which never happened, and took me to reception; the receptionist, who was female presenting, gave me the bottom draw of her desk and placed in there were some period pads, pain killers and a hot water bottle and she told me to come see her whenever I needed “to be discrete” and that I could use the staff toilet which has a special bin and she’d keep my secret and this way nobody needed to know. To this I burst into tears. I have no doubt she meant well but this was to become the first time I remember feeling shame; I felt grossed out by my body, like it had betrayed me and wasn’t on my side, feelings I would continue battle with as I suddenly became taller than all of my classmates, as I had hair places no one else did and had to stop wearing cute training bras with pop stars on them because I had breasts that weren’t there last week and now needed support. Oh and the attention that having a bra drew and the strangeness of going from being looked at as an object of absurdity to being looked at as a sexual object which was all wrapped up in playground politics and kept me as the other.
Now that I’m an adult, I see that the main contributor to othering is to create taboos. Keeping things hushed and not talked about fully and informatively exoticizes them and makes them objects defined by outsiderness; It socializes a ‘norm’ and turns children on each other upholding all the patriarchal status quo. Keeping periods discrete maintains the idea that women are different and are concerned with what is and isn’t polite, keeping the female body as something alien.
Perhaps 18 months after my first period we had a lesson where we were taught the biology of the menstrual cycle and puberty and my monstrousness was lessened by the powerful tool of information. It didn’t make me more comfortable In my own skin, or remove the otherness I was experiencing, but it reframed it. It made sense to me and people around me understood too. I got to be the expert in a world that they were just discovering, though personally I’d rather not have had to find out about it literally sat in a pool of my own blood. It was excellent information that bodies do change and that everyone else’s would too. Talking about periods and sex and sexuality is good for everyone! Talk talk talk.
