One of the nicest things about reading blogs? Finding your day’s exact experiences, the ones you’ve just been completely fed up with, being written about by someone else. Like I did today last weekend (took me a while to post this) here at Bitch PhD. Turns out while I was yelling my little head off, she was yelling about the exact same thing on the other side of the world. For some reason this fills me with a sense of peace.
I didn’t manage a tear in my eye when I delivered my version of Bitch’s sermon, but I did summon a very empty threat of leaving without him and our daughter.
And while I’m recommending Bitch posts – this is an interesting one here too on the culture of concealment that surrounds menstruation. Do you feel comfortable asking your partner to buy tampons/pads for you? Do you openly carry tampons/pads to the toilet at work with you? Do you ever talk about your menstruation in front of your friends, children, men?
A good mother friend of mine comes from a country where a girl’s first period is celebrated. You spend the week of your first period being showered in gifts and attention from all your female relatives and then at the end of the week you are the guest of honour at a big family dinner. You’re not supposed to be bothered with any of your male relatives during your week of celebration until the dinner, but I’m informed by my friend that if your dad is a complete sweetheart he will slip notes under your bedroom door telling you how proud he is of you and how he is looking forward to seeing your grown up self at the big family dinner. The contrast between this and my Australian experience of starting menstruation is stark, where the golden rule is to hide your menstruation from everyone in case it embarrasses them and/or drives them to tease you mercilessly.
Another close friend and I have decided to borrow something of the tradition of celebration when the time comes for our daughters. I’m not yet elaborating on exactly what this celebration will look like, not because it is secret women’s business but because not having a single new-age bone in my body it is going to take me a while to actually design my menstruation celebration. If our daughters are like we were as adolescent girls then they will be cringing in horror at the prospect, but then they probably won’t be raised with the same degree of internalised shame about menstruation that we were. And we hope that if they know at least one other girl (ie. the daughter of their mother’s friend) enduring this strange celebration that they won’t feel quite so awkward about it.
Hmmm…I had my period by the time I was eleven. I’d read Are You There God, it’s Me Margaret? so I kind of knew what a period was, though I wasn’t in the least inclined to have one myself. I was mortified, I was so not ready to grow up, I was still playing with toys! The last thing I craved was ceremony, I didn’t want to be a woman, I wasn’t in the slightest interested in my capacity for fertility, and none of my friends had it so I didn’t feel like I was gaining entry into a special club. I didn’t want to be first. The idea of creating any kind of fuss about it is anathema to me. I like the idea of a present (a journal perhaps), a quiet special dinner, and a reinforcement of the notion that it’s not a split from childhood, but part of the confluence of childhood and adulthood.
I love reading Bitch, she always has great insights. 🙂
I’m with Penni. When I first started I quietly got a pad and just went about my business. I don’t think anyone knew until I had already been menstruating for several months, I did not want a fuss. But then I grew up in an area where it was dirty and shameful.
I’m coming up to that defining moment with my almost 12-year old daughter, and I’m not sure what’ll happen. I would like to find some special way to celebrate her womanhood without embarassing her. Thanks for the post…I’m going to talk to some of my daughters’ friends’ mothers to see if we can come up with something…and as for the yelling….I can relate. It’s so irritating to have to be the energy behind family activities. Thinking them up, planning them, and then having to prod people into having fun? It’s just too much.
I love the idea of celebrating it. But I think there has to be a foundation laid well beforehand, emphasizing pride in our bodies. If a celebration comes out of that tradition of affirmation, I think it would be a very welcome and natural extension of your parenting. I think it is a shame that we don’t have more coming of age type ceremonies.
(You are obviously laying that foundation with L, but if my mom had suddenly decided to celebrate my period, after years of telling me that I would go to hell if I masturbated and being too ashamed to refer to my genitals by their real names, well, that’d just be weird.)
I bought my daughter a special pair of earrings – she chose them. her first grown up jewellery. she insisted on this being a private shopping trip. This didnt seem to have much impact on her attitude at the time. I hope that as she gets older its something she remembers as important.
she cringed with horror at just about everything to do with menstruation, despite my always having been very open about it. she refused to discuss it with me and even getting rid of her used pads was a problem for her – she hid them in her bedroom, rather than risk them being ‘seen’ (this shocked me until i spoke to other mothers who had similar experiences.)
At 17 she seems fine about it and now discusses it openly, not just with me but with freinds (including male friends) thirteen, puberty and menstruation were really difficult – in our experiences a massive shock to the system regardless of what your mother says or does. She once said that what upset her most was the fact that in sex education classes the boys were told about what puberyt entailed for girls,and that they were curious, and often inappropriate in the way they spoke about it to their female peers. they would frequently find the girls’ pads or tampons and hang them up in obvious places, dripping with tomato sauce.
What a wonderful culture that embraces and makes this a celebration for girls. Still after my daughter’s experiences I sometimes wonder if it should be a strictly female celebration that excludes boys – give them their own. Though would it be better to educate them later or earlier? I’d like to think my son would never be part of that kind of behaviour (and he and i have discussed it.)
Like Penni, I was the first girl in my class to get my period, so it was doubly humiliating. My parents handled it quite well, but at 10, I wasn’t interested in being told I had “become a woman”. I wasn’t ready for that!
I think devising a ceremony or something to mark the occasion is a wonderful idea, and I would concentrate on finding better words to describe the experience.
I’m trying to think of what occasion marked my actually feeling like a woman. It probably involved a few things, but it was also probably a good ten years after I first got my period, and that was a bog standard 13 or 14. I can’t even remember exactly when it was. I went to the cupboard, found the tampons, read the instructions and that was it. Then again, I still hate the things and avoid them whenever possible.
I definitely think our society could use more rites of passage. I hope to read some suggestions for good ones from you and/or your readers. I like Rose’s earrings, and I would love to have a “becoming a teenager” ritual of some sort based more on psychological readiness than the vagaries of hormones.
I guess the age at the time of her first period would come into play. Hadn’t thought of that. I didn’t have my first until I was 15 and I was very ready for it. I had been faking it for almost a year because all of my friends already had theirs and I was jealous.
I don’t think that it has to be a “you’re a woman now!” celebration- just reassurance that our bodies are amazing and nothing to be ashamed of, no matter what our culture tries to tell us.
I was 10 when I got my period, and my mother had always been dreadfully close-mouthed about anything remotely personal – so thank goodness I had some older friends who would talk about that sort of thing in front of me!
If Splodge is a girl, I’d love to do a wee celebration type thing, though I remember being mortified at the thought of my father or brother or anyone male knowing (ah, ingrained societal sexism and shame).
I think, if tomorrow I were to be greeted with a pubertal daughter of my own, I’d give her a day off from school, take her out for lunch, just the two of us, talk to her about all the menstruation stuff, and probably buy her something like her first adult piece of jewellery (lovely idea, rose).
Unh. Well, maybe I’m on the right road to a menstrual celebration because my 18 month old already knows what a tampon is. Although she does like to point to my stained panties while I’m peeing and proclaim “yucky,” so maybe not.
And, for the record, my live-out hubby is totally cool buying me tampons and pads. He did so while we were together, and still does so if I’m in a pinch and he happens to be going to the store.
But I certainly am among those hide a tampon in my sweaty little fist as I sidle off to the bathroom. Perhaps it’s because people (in the US, at least) like to blame bitchiness on your period. So, if you’re caught menstruating, that’s just another great reason for your colleagues to call you a bitch to your face. Or behind your back.
I got my first period when I was at my Dad’s place (my parent’s use to share custody and I spent a week at each parent’s house – moving house every Sunday). I had to literally grit my teeth when I walked out to the living room to tell him what had happened. I just wanted to hide it, but I needed some pads and I didn’t want him to feel as though I couldn’t share things with him.
Poor guy! He tried to make a little speech about how I was all grown up now and then walked up to the shops to buy my some (nappy sized!) pads.
I was so relieved that it was Sunday and I was only hours away from going to my Mum’s place. Dad was lovely, but I really needed some female support and advice!