Book Review of Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation
“Whenever
menstruation is mentioned these days, it’s only because there’s an underlying
sales pitch. Either that, or it’s the subject of a complaint or the punch line
to a joke. Or all of the above. There’s no real discussion of the actual event
itself – not just the physiology and hormones of menstruation, but its complex
history, its place in society, the inescapable role it plays in every woman’s
life, and its ramifications for our health, the environment, and our lives.”
This is the premise of Elissa Stein and Susan Kim’s textbook-looking Flow:
The Cultural Story of Menstruation. Flow is that discussion that is
missing in our lives.
For almost all
women, menstruation is a normal part of our lives that involves the entire
body, despite its unpredictable and subjective nature. “What’s more, no matter
how old we are, if we’re female, we’re actually menstrual our entire lives:
either pre-, menstrual, peri-, menopausal, or post-. And the stages of our
lives are in a sense defined by where we are on the menstrual time line.” Stein
and Kim thoroughly examine each stage of this time line. One method they use:
collecting narratives from women about their experiences with a variety of
period-related topics, like the onset of their period, menopause, etc.
These narratives
illustrate something that Stein and Kim spell out for us. “Our relationship to
menstruation is one that has been brokered not in our own homes, but at the
supermarket, the pharmacy, and the doctor’s office. The conversation about
menstruation (if you can call it that) is strictly one-sided and has been
smoothly co-opted by big business, with a little help from religion, history,
and society.”
To provide us with
context, Stein and Kim take us on a tour through history and how menstruation
has been perceived in different places and at different moments. Aristotle, for
example, “concluded that menstrual flow was excess blood that hadn’t yet been
made into a fetus.” But Aristotle didn’t go so far as to say that women created
life; according to him, the blood was useless until it combined with semen,
which triggered the fetus’ growth. Hippocrates, on the other hand, believed
“menstruation was the body’s way of getting rid of excess blood that was
responsible for imbalance and disease.” It was this line of thinking that led
him to the idea that the same practice could be used on men with the same
result. A Greek physician took this line of thinking and took the next logical
step; thus began the medical practice of bloodletting to cure the body and
balance the blood. During the Middle Ages, any illness without a diagnosis or
bad behavior was explained as having been brought on by the devil. As a result,
women who were slapped with the label “hysteria” were not treated by the local
doctor, but tried in Church courts as a witch.
Even as recently as the 20th
century, the idea of a woman having control over her own sexuality was treated
with horror.
“Professor T.W.
Shannon, in his 1913 book,
Self Knowledge
and Guide to Sex Instruction,
was another
nattering nabob of negativity
when it came to
the whole idea of female
self-love. Girls
who masturbated and poked
around where they
shouldn’t be poking around
were clearly
writing themselves a one-way
ticket to lifelong
pain, suffering, and
worse. ‘The mind
becomes sluggish and
stupid,’ he thundered. ‘Memory
fails and sometimes the poor victim becomes insane.
This habit leads to a gloomy,
despondent, discouraged state of mind. Because of
this mental state, many commit
suicide.”
The prevailing views of
menstruation were still lodged in some antique mindset in the past century. As
recently as the 1920s, women on the rag were banned from some churches, Mexican
silver mines, and Vietnamese opium labs for fear of the women desecrating a
sacred space, causing all the precious metals to disappear, and turning the
drug bitter, respectively. From 1930 to 1960, Lysol disinfectant was marketed
as a form of female birth control for married women as well as a bathroom
cleanser. It took an investigation by the American Medical Association into the
testimonials of (non-existant) European doctors to prove that not only the
so-called experts had never existed, but Lysol did not, in face, kill sperm.
For some, religious taboos are still potent
today when it comes to menstruation. The Talmud, a central text of Judaism,
states, “if a menstruating woman walks between two men, one of them will die.”
Orthodox Jewish men refuse to shake hands with women because they’re afraid
she’s on the rag and touching her would make him impure. To this day in
Jerusalem, the very religious use a special bus system that seats men in the
front and woman in the back.
Stein and Kim also explore some of the
biggest myths in women’s history, like hysteria.
“That mysterious catchall of female
ailments that existed in recorded history
for thousands of years. . . . It’s
associated
with out-of-control emotions, irrational fears, and unregulated, over-
the-top
behavior, but overwhelmingly,
only
in women.”
Fascinatingly enough, the common
cure for hysteria was for the doctor to stimulate the patient’s clitoris to the
point of orgasm. (Although the ancient Greeks would have prescribed marriage, lots
of sex, and lots of babies.) In a time and place where the only definition of
sex was the hetero standard of missionary position. “Stimulating someone’s
clitoris was considered therapeutic and about as racy as bandaging a head
wound.” At the same time, this cure was only considered appropriate as a
medical treatment performed by a professional doctor or midwife in exchange for
money. Curiously, hysteria only afflicted women who had the means to be forever
bedridden. Perhaps the silver lining to all this was the invention of the
vibrator, which considerably sped up treatment time.
Stein and Kim
ultimately assert that hysteria has been the greatest false diagnoses in the
history of Western medicine, and their case is compelling. It wasn’t until 1952
that the American Psychiatric Association dropped the term as a disease. But
they also question the meaning behind hysteria as a disease.
“Could what was
historically called
hysteria –
widespread instances of
clinical
depression, unhappiness, anxiety,
anger – have been
a simple product not
so much of sexual
or maternal frustration,
but of actual
systemized oppression? After
all, throughout
history, women had no
rights or
autonomy, and were routinely
barred from higher
education, property
ownership, the right
to vote, careers.
Could it be that
when anyone is faced with
such fundamental
obstacles to happiness
and
self-actualization, even a whiz-bang
orgasm isn’t
enough to make things all
better again?”
Stein and Kim’s radical
interpretation is one that makes sense. (To me at least – but then again, it’s
only my opinion. It doesn’t mean anything.) They continue their sharp
examination of modern menstrual myths in language, advertising, and even the
medical community.
How
people talk about menstruation demonstrates the overarching message we are
meant to take away from it. People can talk about period, but only if it’s the
punch line to a joke or as an annoying, disgusting nuisance. There is no
acknowledgement that menstruation is “a complex and active process that is
actually an integral part of our breathing, sweating, digesting, thinking
bodies.” For example, consider the connotation of “feminine hygiene.” It
implies something that is dirty and needs to be cleansed and disinfected. The
same is derived from “sanitary pad.”
One of the biggest
modern myths that Stein and Kim debunk is one that affects millions of women
across the nation, specifically those on the Pill.
“If you’re currently on the Pill that
thing you’ve been calling your period all
this time isn’t one at all! It’s the
Stepford wife of
menstruation, in that it
looks like a
period and even kind of
acts like one, but
is ultimately not your
period, plus is a
lot better behaved and
less
argumentative.”
This was earth-shattering news to
me, especially since I used to take it and never knew the difference.
Another cultural
mainstay Stein and Kim take on is premenstrual syndrome, the granddaughter of
hysteria. They debunk the idea that it’s all in our hormones by declaring there
is no evidence linking premenstrual syndrome symptoms to hormones. The duo also
points out that it’s only in the United States that things like PMS and PMDD
are recognized as medical in nature, and while the Food and Drug Administration
accepts PMDD as a disease, the World Health Organization does not.
One of the most
visually appealing aspects of Flow is its considerable space dedicated
to antique and vintage advertisements for products related to menstruation.
Trends begin to emerge and Stein and Kim do their best to put them into the
proper context. For example, by the 1960s, femcare print ads featured as much
variety as a box of corn flakes.
“Ads began
featuring girls bopping around
… none older than
22, none overweight (or
even normal
weight), none in dark clothes.
And ethnically,
all were as white as a
Mormon family
picnic.”
Admittedly, things are much better
now than they used to be. But despite the improvements, one clear message
remains in these ads even today: your period is a secret and needs to be hidden.
“By reinforcing this secrecy and the shame that comes with it, menstrual
advertising still hasn’t changed one but after all these years.” And it’s not
just limited to the menstruation process: the vagina has been treated as no
better than a flesh and blood version of a toilet, “as a foul, germ-ridden
receptacle that needs to be vigilantly cleaned, disinfected, and deodorized
before one can even think of having company over.”
In the end,
perhaps the greatest myth Stein and Kim tackle is the femininity myth that
Freud popularized in Western culture, a myth “still being fed to every woman
around the world and throughout history, since birth.” The essentially feminine
woman “is boundlessly patient . . . impossibly sympathetic, eternally
sweet-tempered, and just plain good (whatever the hell that means).” But in
tandem with their denunciation of the femininity myth is the presentation of
the idea that women’s flow can be viewed as useful and an catalyst of change
instead of something requiring sanitation and disinfecting. “In fact, it’s
currently being explored by researchers who have recently discovered that
menstrual blood contains certain types of stem cells. Potentially, endometrial
stem cells could be used to combat a host of diseases and would be arguably
less controversial, to some, than those obtained from human embryos.”
What a wonderful
world. Better get over your aversion to menstrual blood, my dear Orthodox Jews
and advertising executives – flow could save your life.
Grade: A-
Thorough examination of the historical and current contexts
of menstruation. Stein and Kim get close to blowing the lid off things, but
back off of their most radical, controversial, and probing analysis.
