Period dramas: menstruation really can be a bloody nightmare | Life and style
On Woman’s Hour, Zawe Ashton talked about a recurring fear, when performing on stage, that she will get her period. She was in Genet’s The Maids in London’s West End, and confessed this to her female co-stars, who confessed the same right back â€" that they too worry they will look up to find the audience sniggering at the blood dripping down their thigh.
I’m not one of those “Ladies, let’s talk about periods†people, though, of course, it goes without saying that I will fight for those people’s bloody right to do so. Their right to say, when you ask how they are, that they “need to bleedâ€, even if they know I’m going to pretend to vomit right afterwards. Or to discuss quite openly the complications of rinsing one’s mooncup in a unisex toilet, or to have any number of conversations about the time they lost their tampon inside themselves quite loudly in a café in Rye. Maybe if I was one of those people, comfortable with saying the word “menses†out loud rather than secretly thinking it should be banned, I’d find it less radical â€" the sudden realisation that all women who have periods share this fear, that you will bleed and strangers will see, and know, and laugh.
Anyway, standing there washing up, listening to the radio and squinting with recognition, it occurred to me there’s a whole half of the population who has no idea about this silent anxiety most women share. That there are millions of people who, upon seeing a friend’s new white sofa, will have absolutely none of the flashing premonitions of standing up to see a spot spreading towards the cushion. Who will have no damning associations with pale trousers, who will never have tied a jumper around their waists, just in case. Who haven’t, since they were 12, been almost obsessive about checking their reflection from behind, about locating the nearest bathroom, about walking slightly behind a group. Because from right back then, being female involves a certain viscerality, a certain shame.
Across the world, wider discussions have begun on the politics of periods, and westerners are learning about the impact they have on girls’ health and education in places like Uganda, where menstruation is one of the main reasons girls drop out of school. Except it’s not just in developing countries â€" in March, a police officer tracking truancy in a Leeds school discovered a large number of female pupils skipped lessons during their periods. In June, a survey found 46% of teenage girls said they’d skipped PE because of their periods, with 39% saying they were worried about leaks.
I’m 36, and that worry hasn’t gone away. Which makes me wonder, what are so many of us, like Zawe Ashton, scared of? That people will think we’re dirty, out of control; that the sight of blood will make strangers think something is wrong, like an ambulance siren spreading across our leggings? That it triggers some evolutionary disgust, that the second it leaves our body the blood becomes dangerous? Period products are linked only by their pastel discretion. We learn early how to hide a tampon in our palm on the way to the toilet, or slip a pad up our sleeve. Or is the idea of a public period just shameful because it’s female? Because it’s so, so female, so much proof that despite all the adorable attempts to pursue equality, women will always be different.
When I was at junior school I had a teacher who confiscated my diary, and later read it in front of the class. That evening he phoned my mum to report that in this diary I’d sworn and used language that was disrespectful towards him. Luckily, before he read it, I’d managed to rip out the Tampax leaflet I’d stuck inside the cover, for research. The idea of him seeing that, knowing it was mine, that one day I’d be a person who, on top of everything, had periods, had been too much to bear. Funny though, it was a year with this teacher that turned me from a shy and scholarly child into the feminist nightmare I remain to this day.
Women across the world are juggling a hundred anxieties of different shapes, one of which is the panic that somebody will notice. But for me, there’s something comforting in the realisation that so many of us feel like our whole lives are one long period drama.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman
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