STIGMA

My friends and I have a situation we’ve dubbed a ‘surprise attack’.

A surprise attack: when your period starts, catches you off guard and you leak through.

This leads to what we then like to call a ‘murder mystery’.

A murder mystery: when you’ve leaked through and you have to deal with a crime scene in your pants.

Over the years these have triggered many moments of cringey shame and embarrassing stories. We laugh about them, but still, that was embarrassing.

All menstruating people have different experiences with their period, but where does that stigma, which so many of us confront, come from?

Think about it, even if we’re at the supermarket buying products (ahem, a menstrual cup, ahem) it’s so common to hide them amongst lots of other things in the basket and through the checkout. Are you cool with the check-out guy knowing you’re on your period? I don’t know why, but at least before thinking about it like this, I did!

Menstruation is a biological and a social process. Today it is accepted as a fact of our everyday lives, but research has shown that change occurs as soon as conversation shifts from general talk about menstruation to an individual’s. When it becomes known that ‘I’ am on ‘my’ period, silence dawns and most women feel uncomfortable (Newton, 2012). Scambler (2009) describes menstruation as a ‘felt’ stigma, including elements of shame.

Why? A lot of thought has been reduced to this: stereotypes. Stereotypes about the limitations and lower capabilities women have when they’re on their period. Belief in these stereotypes create a culture, with attitudes and meanings and, stigmas. (Kisling, 2002; Rosenware, 2012; Chrisler, 2013).

Chrisler’s study (2002) revealed that menstruating women are portrayed in popular culture as:

Tearful

Tense

Weak

Miserable

Physically ill

Mentally unstable

Easily enraged

Out of control

And, potentially violent

…um WOW! What the heck!

The ramification from these qualities… social importance. Less social importance (Chrisler, 2013; Johnston-Robledo and Chrisler, 2011). Menstruation causes hormonal fluctuations, yes, and sometimes they ain’t 100%. But when a stereotype is deeply embedded into a culture and it’s as direct and forceful as this, our attitudes and social identities completely shape around it (Kowalski and Chapple, 2000). No wonder we don’t want to be personally attached with these stereotypes applying to us ‘right now’, when ‘I’m on my period’.

This isn’t the only reason for the stigma, it’s also been connected to ideas about being unclean (Chrisler, 2011) and how people are educated (Newton, 2012).

But there’s some food for thought. Next time, before I dive to cover up the pad that fell out of my bag, I might stop and ask myself why it’s so embarrassing. Because actually, it isn’t! What's fantastic is that recently there has been so much movement in our culture going against these stigmas. Let's keep going that way.

References:

Chrisler, J. (2002). Hormone hostages: The cultural legacy of PMS as a legal defense. In L. H. Collins, M. R. Dunlap, & J. C. Chrisler (Eds.), Charting a new course for feminist psychology (pp. 238–252). Westport, CT: Praeger.

Chrisler, J. (2013). Teaching Taboo Topics. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37(1), pp.128-132.

Johnston-Robledo, I. and Chrisler, J. (2011). The Menstrual Mark: Menstruation as Social Stigma. Sex Roles, 68(1-2), pp.9-18.

Kissling, E. A. (2002). On the rag on screen: Menarche in film and television. Sex Roles, 46, 5–12. doi:10.1023/A:1016029416750

Kowalski, R. and Chapple, T. (2000). The Social Stigma of Menstruation: Fact or Fiction?. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24(1), pp.74-80.

Rosenware, L. (2012). Periods in pop culture: Menstruation in film and television. New York, NY: Lexington Books.

Scambler, G. (2009) Health related stigma. Sociology of Health & Illness 31(3): 441–455.

Newton (2012). Status passage, stigma and menstrual management: ‘Starting’ and ‘being on’. Social Theory & Health, 10(4), pp.392-407.

Teen Vogue (2016). Illustrations by Caitlin G. McCollom. [image] Available at: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/period-shaming-stigma-menstruation-body-positivity [Accessed 6 Nov. 2017].