The Red Pillar

So, I feel the need to warn you upfront that the following topic might be at best a bit unusual, and at worst too heavy on the "ew" factor.  Not to mention that it might give you cause to wonder what kind of person sits around and ponders these things.  

Before we dive right in, I thought (maybe in my own defense) that I might explain a bit how this topic came to mind. I'm not a spontaneously creative person. But I am a collector and a synthesizer of trivia and creative detritus.  The inspiration for this topic originated from a couple of posts in a Myspace forum and, well, getting my period. 

One post was a question along the lines of "If you could go back in time, in what time would you want to live?" I didn't respond to it, but I did give it some thought. My conclusion was that if going back in time meant that I had to do so as a woman, then the only time period I would want to live in would be the current one.  With small exception, women throughout history have not had anything close to the same rights as men, and occasionally have had barely the rights of animals.

The second post was by a young woman who is working on a paper about post-modernism and relationships, who asked for thoughts on the impact of being culturally connected via technology has on modern relationships. A few people had already responded to her by the time I saw her note. It got me thinking about how until relatively recently relationship = marriage. And that people entered into marriage for far different reason than many do now. Back then, marriage was largely about economic security for women and for a social structure in which to create and raise children. Today, relationship sometimes never = marriage, and people tend to have many more relationships before marrying. The factors driving people to marry have also changed. Women, for example, are far more economically, socially, and sexually emancipated. 

All of this got me thinking about how much has changed for the better for women, at least in economically developed countries. But what was it that changed, that allowed women to reach for greater equality, for economic, social, and sexual freedom? Two obvious changes were The Pill and abortion. With The Pill to help us avoid pregnancy and abortion to end a pregnancy, we could choose when to have children (if at all) and could spend the intervening years working, educating ourselves, and gaining economic power. 

I was having great fun with these musings. And then I got my period. 

Now, if you are a woman, you can truly appreciate this when I say that this was no ordinary period. It was a Bad One. I'd had surgery a few weeks ago, and the post-op instructions indicated that it might affect my cycle. In reality this translated into being over a week late, and having worse cramping and heavier bleeding than usual. For the men who've read this far…aside from the physical discomfort, what sucks about having a period is that even if your cycle is fairly regular, it is never completely predictable. It is the proverbial red shoe waiting to drop.

But putting this menstrual situation to the side, I still was hung up on how women have achieved emancipation in part by gaining control over their bodies. And it made me wonder how women in the past have dealt with menstruation. 

The Museum of Menstruation & Women's Heath was founded by (brace yourselves) Harry Finley. Yes, a man. It was a physical museum from 1994-98, and hosted 1,500 visitors a year. It still exists, in virtual form (www.mum.org), and is an unbelievable wealth of all things menstruate, and is the source for any of the remotely authoritative information shared here.

Did you know, for example, that your choices for dealing with your menstrual flow include more than just sanitary napkins or tampons? You could choose to use a menstrual cup, which is exactly as it sounds: a soft rubber or latex cup that fits into the vagina and collect the fluids. The first patent for a menstrual cup was obtained by Leona Chalmer's in the 1930's, and the virtues of it were extolled in her pamphlet "The Intimate Side of a Woman's Life."  There are several companies world-wide who still manufacture these things. I'd be curious if anyone has had firsthand experience with using one. And, seriously, if you find these types of quirky sociological topics fascinating, you could lose yourself for hours in Harry's web site.

I was most interested, however, in information about how women have dealt with menstruation in the past. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of historical documentation on this subject 1) because this is about women, and women tend to be rather invisible throughout most of history and 2) this is about menstruation, which if not outright a taboo topic is definitely not something most women want to talk about.  What I did find out was rather shocking. According to Harry, prior to the 1900's, it appears that most American and European women who were not of the moneyed or ruling classes probably used nothing at all to staunch these monthly bleeding. They bleed directly into their clothes or underpants (if they wore any). 

I will let you contemplate that, for a moment.

If your reaction was anything like mine, it was to envision a past that was a whole lot smellier than I'd ever imagined. (And I'd already figured it was pretty smelly…given the infrequency of baths, etc.)  And messier.  

Harry hypothesizes that those of the upper classes did use some kind of cloth/rags and belt contraption. Since many did not, often they bled directly into their chemise or dress. Or if they were factory workers, they bled onto the floor, which was sometimes layered with clean hay. Rather like how one would deal with a cow or horse. 

Now, to put this all in perspective, keep in mind that women menstruated less frequently in the past, mainly because they started puberty later (onset of puberty being linked directly to body fat percentage; which also explains why in our increasingly obese society girls are starting their periods earlier and earlier), they had more children and so spent more of their lives pregnant, and they also breastfed longer. 

However, even with less menstruation going on, an important implication of all of this is that a woman's reproductive cycle was also a whole lot more obvious in the past than it is today. I speculate this is exactly why during the 1800/1900's that dealing with this messy, smelly, obvious indicator of fertility might be something worth getting inventive about. As industrialism kicked in, there were more opportunities for women to work outside of the home. Going to work with a blood soaked chemise, reeking of fertility, would not necessarily be the most conducive to a productive work environment. Hence, the first commercial, disposable menstrual pads were manufactured in the late 1800's.

So, to The Pill and abortion, I suggest we add Management of Menstruation as the third pillar that supports the emancipation of women. I find it interesting to note that these pillars are all ways that allow women to claim some element of control over their reproductive organs.  Could it be that we gained more equality when the controls we gained over reproduction allowed us to behave more like men? Or to at least not wear the indicators of our fertility on our chemise?