Middle School

While speaking with my peers, I realized that, in our American, middle-class, white, public schools, there is a phenomenon of being ‘hush-hush’ about menstrual bleeding. My hypothesis is that this comes during the first few years of menstruation. My peers expressed the need to hide tampons up their sleeves, to not make known that they were bleeding, and the mortifying embarrassment if a boy (or even worse, a male teacher) found out.

 

Thank goodness there was an abundance of support and information about it.

 

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Hey, at least there were attempts. American Girl® books came out with a tween-friendly guide to bodily changes. Television advertisements reassured young women that certain brands of pads would keep them confident and clean.

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After anonymously asking women from around the country about being young on their periods, the general sentiment I got was summed up by one response: “Miserable.” Using a Google Form, I asked two short questions: 1) At what age did you get your first period? And 2) What were the first few years like? Through these Google Form responses, I was able to view what having a period in middle school was like, without having that experience personally.

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When it came to age, most of my respondents got their first period at age 12, with other answers ranging from 10-14. I didn’t realize how different it is for everyone, not because of varying ages, but varying symptoms. Some women had awful cramps, a lot of the time misinterpreting their pain as some other ailment. Other women had light, easy periods that got worse over time.

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And I’m not the only one to gather this information. There is no shortage of papers on culture, information, expectations, and subjective experiences of girls' menarche. A quick PsychoInfo database search will bring up papers from almost every continent. (No, I did not find anything from Antarctica.)

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A group of eighth-grade girls in the Bronx even made a podcast to talk about periods, because they are sick of the silence. Their podcast, Sssh! Periods, won grand prize for the middle school section of NPR's Student Podcast Challenge. In their charter school bathroom, signs are posted about how to dispose of "feminine products." One of these eighth-grade podcasters expressed her frustration with it not even using the word "pad."

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Other papers proposed many young women do not know whether or not their period is "typical." Come to think of it, how are we supposed to know? Are we to measure and compare our blood loss? And how can we rate our pain objectively, when women have differing pain tolerances?

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From my questionnaire, embarrassment/awkwardness and irregularity were consistent responses, which causes me to wonder: Is this avoidable? As I mentioned previously, pre-period cramps and emotional rollercoasters can only be mitigated so much, but what about the societal component?

           

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Young women may feel lost, awkward, or embarrassed that there is this whole new thing about them that they can’t control. In my experience, the knowledge for girls is the standard: this is what will happen, and this is how you respond. However, I hypothesize the feelings of isolation and uncertainty can be helped with more complete information about how it may happen. What would happen if girls knew that irregularity in the beginning is normal? Would there be as much secrecy or shame? What would the comfort feel like, knowing that most women experience menarche differently?