Periods are in the headlines. The more coverage this gets the better. It is about time there was a modern, truly open dialogue about the impact menstruation has on girls. Being an adolescent has never been an easy time in anyone’s life, but when I was an adolescent, we had Claire Rayner as an almost constant presence on our TV screens. She was the agony aunt who helped us to get through the most difficult of times. She was a force of nature who offered honest, open and thoughtful advice over many decades. Clare Rayner was a campaigner for many causes, but she is particularly remembered as a powerful voice who fought for sanitary products to be advertised. She normalised the symptoms, and let everyone know what women go through. She always had a thoughtful response no matter how challenging or bizarre the question. She was a major influence in my own adolescence and made what had previously been a taboo subject, mainstream.
Periods in the News
Rayner would have been horrified to listen to the heart-breaking interview of the girl who admitted that she had not gone into school when she had her period because she had no sanitary protection. She did not want to ask her Mother who was struggling with money. These girls describe feeling incredibly ill, and incredibly isolated. Listen here. Rayner would have been the first port of call for advice in such a situation. In today’s society there is no excuse for girls not having access to sanitary protection. It may be the modern curse of too much information that is the issue. But, even if they do find the right information, does any amount of reading prepare them for what is happening to their bodies? It is great to hear how much support these girls eventually got from their teachers. Nevertheless, we need to reopen the dialogue that Claire Rayner fought for. It needs to be more mainstream again. We are in urgent need of a Claire Rayner equivalent for today’s teenagers. There is too much emphasis on how girls need to look that takes away the dialogue about the physical symptoms experienced by girls and women. Is there an assumption that this is a battle that is already won? Well it clearly is not. If it had been, would there be so many girls with low self-esteem and signs of mental illness in our schools today?
The Curse
‘The curse’, being ‘on your period’, ‘on the rag’, ‘time of the month’, ‘red army’, ‘lady time’, ‘surfing the crimson wave’, ‘Bloody Mary’, ‘shark week’, ‘having the painters in’ … the amount of euphemisms says everything about how menstruation is dealt with in public. According to a study survey by The International Woman’s Health Coalition there are at least 5,000 different slang words and euphemisms for the menstrual cycle across the world. No wonder young girls are still confused. Of the survey undertaken 95% of respondents in the UK had enough information, compared to only 25% in Russia. Therefore, according to this study, the UK is better, but there is still a long way to go in the acceptance of the genuine physical and emotional upset ‘being on the rag’ can have on both girls and women. I defy anyone to say that the experience is any way positive.
Starting your period in School
A friend recently told me how she started her period in school during a maths exam in year 8. She was at an all-girls school. When she asked to go the toilet – she was told that as girls they need to ‘get used to it, a period is no excuse for failure’. Did she get support afterwards? No. She had to get the tube across London with her blazer around her waist to cover the stains.We thought things had changed. I know all schools keep sanitary products for girls to access if they need to, but what if girls are from a home or culture where it is considered shameful? What if they are too embarrassed and feeling extremely emotional? It can be a very big ask to reveal such a need.
100% examinations
How many Year 11 girls will be sitting their 100% examination whilst on their period? At a time when they are most definitely not at their best. Quite a few of my friends have put their daughters on the pill to make sure they can get through the examinations without the unwelcome inconvenience of ‘the curse’. How will the more vulnerable girls cope? Especially if they haven’t even got parents who are aware enough to provide them with sanitary protection whilst they are on their period. They are at risk of missing their examinations altogether. A tragic and avoidable waste.
Onset of puberty
The symptoms of puberty and the links to difficulties in adolescence should never be underestimated. As part of a recent A level session I included research into the life of Christina Rossetti. In her Christine Rossetti biography ‘Learning not to be First’ Kathleen Jones outlines how menstruation radically changed Rossetti’s life. The physical and emotional changes that impacted on her included ‘Primitive methods of coping hygienically with the menstrual flow, and the necessity for chaperoning an adolescent girl, meant an inevitable loss of personal freedom.’ Jones also tells us that ‘One of her symptoms was a ‘suffocating sensation’ which sounds very similar to a panic attack.’ I am dealing with an increasing amount of teenage girls who are feeling the very same. They feel panicked and cannot understand or identify why they are feeling the way they do. Is the increase in mental health partly due to a lack of understanding and appreciation of the impact of hormones and puberty?
Calm Down, Dear
David Cameron’s patronising call for a Angela Eagle MP in parliament to ‘calm down dear’ suggesting that she is inexplicably hysterical is yet another example of how we still need to fight for women’s rights. Suggesting that an outspoken woman ‘hysterical’ was justified by Downing Street spokesman as a “a humorous remark”. A shocking comment combined with a predictably pathetic excuse. The origin of the word hysteria is particularly telling, it has its roots in the Greek hystera meaning womb. Jones tells us that hysteria and high intellect were so strongly linked in Victorian times ‘that it was thought by many eminent physicians until the beginning of the twentieth century that writing and studying could make girls either sterile, or mad, or both.’ Clearly, we have debunked such ridiculous diagnoses with regard sterility, but maybe without a full understanding of their symptoms, girls could quite easily believe and feel that they are going mad, and most tellingly, they cannot pinpoint why. Do they appreciate how their heightened emotions are linked to their hormones? Do they fully realise how their emotions can be difficult to control? I doubt it.
Can we link the current increase in mental illness to social repression?
Some Victorian psychiatrists made the connection between social repression and nervous illness in women. Freud and Breuer in Studies on Hysteria observed that ‘Adolescents who are later to become hysterical are for the most part lively, gifted and full of intellectual interests before they fall ill’ though they did also state that ‘repetitious domestic routines could be the cause of hysteria in very intelligent women’. The novels of Charlotte Bronte, Jayne Eyre and Villette represent the repression of feeling, particularly sexual feeling, leads to breakdown and sometimes madness. Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason and Lucy Snow are all victims. Girls in today’s society need an outlet for the extremity of the emotions they are feeling, and creativity is an essential part of this. One explanation for the increase in mental health is due to the narrowing of the curriculum, where students feel that there is a lack of choice, and consequently their lives and careers are not going in a direction that they would personally choose. This lack of choice is causing their feelings of repression and panic. Notably, it is the creative subjects that are disappearing, consequently students are feeling that there is less and less opportunity to express themselves. Could the lack of control combined with the ‘tedious routines’ of mock after mock examination be contributing to the increase in mental health issues? With the major cuts to education due in September, and where almost all GCSEs will be 100% examinations in 2016, this is going to get even worse.
We need a Modern Day Claire Rayner
No girl in the UK should not have access to sanitary products. They should not be feeling, like Rossetti felt in Victorian times, too humiliated to go out in public because of their ‘primitive hygiene’. It is happening today, and there is no excuse for it. We need an agony aunt and role model for this generation, someone who will be open and honest, and thoughtful. The girls need a stronger message, a way forward that gives them some direction, someone they know will be on their side no matter what. I have included a link to Claire Rayner’s obituary, please take the time to read this – she left us a truly remarkable legacy and we owe it to her to continue to fight for this cause. In many ways she is irreplaceable, but I am in no doubt, we need a new Claire Rayner!
References
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/oct/12/claire-rayner-obituary –
‘Learning not the be First – the Life of Christina Rossetti’ by Kathleen Jones
The International Woman’s Health Coalition – 90,000 responses spanning 190 different countries
Freud and Breuer in Studies on Hysteria