Periods: Out of the closet

Every woman I know has her “first-period” story. I remember coming home from school the day I got mine. I was a bit of a tomboy and everyone in our “group” expected me to get it last. My best friend Kelli got it first, no surprise, she already had boobs and hips in grade seven. I told my Mom after supper, while doing the dishes. “Guess what happened to me today,” I said, brimming with the excitement of proof that I really was a girl after all. “I got my period!”

“I don’t get mine, anymore.” After her eighth kid (me) her doctor had insisted on a hysterectomy. “You’ll have to talk to your sister.”

“Oh,” I replied, that sinking feeling creeping right down into my now apparently fertile loins; I suddenly didn’t feel so smug about my stained underwear.

My sister handed me a super-monster-jumbo tampon and left the room. I managed to get it in about halfway and spent the night uncomfortably shifting my butt around wondering what I’d been so excited about.

In the recently released My Little Red Book, 18-year-old editor Rachel Kauder Nalebuff compiles 92 short stories by women about their first period.

It’s about time our “little friend,” “Aunt Flo” or whatever favourite euphemistic name you were taught to give your period came out of the closet.

It’s shocking really, that this thing that we put up with once a month for more than half of our lives (seven days X 12 months X 40 years = a lot) is still so taboo.

We may have come a little way from the days of viewing menstruating women as unclean or ill and the belief that menstrual blood was dangerous, unlucky and dirty. But I don’t know how many times my moods or reactions have been written off because “it must be that time of the month” or how many times, when I’m really experiencing “that time of the month” in a bad way, I have been made to feel like I’ve got a convenient excuse.

I wish we’d learn to celebrate menarche, as some cultures do. A friend of mine’s 10-year-old has decided she wants to have a “period party.” She’s already working on the guest list. I like that.

One last gripe. Who came up with the term “feminine protection” anyway? No doubt, the same people who come up with the brand names. Satin Touch? I mean, really, it makes having your period sound almost orgasmic. And the selection has become mind-boggling. Faced with a wall of wings, super-absorbency, day-time, night-time, heavy-flow, light-flow, unbleached, biodegradable, mini, maxi, super-maxi, super expensive “feminine protection,” it’s enough to make you want to cry. Then again, it could just be PMS.

(Note to readers: Last week, I wrote that The Bachelor Jason changed his mind six months after agreeing to marry Melissa. It was actually six weeks.)

– Josey Vogels is a sex and relationship columnist and author of five books on the subjects. For more info, visit www.joseyvogels.com.