The Period That Matters:Menstruation, Illness, and Women’s Bodies

This photo essay aims at one of the most common but always overlooked sufferings for women: menstruation. As one unique experience shared amongst women, menstruation is unavoidably linked to different social meanings, intersecting with biomedicine and gender, such as fragility, filth, pains, puberty, and fertility. It is normal in women’s experiences, as for most women menstruation is in their monthly routines. Yet, it can be abnormal when menstrual periods are tied with moodiness, dysmenorrhea, heavy bleeding, or disorders. Women’s bodily experience of menstruation provides us a lens into women’s daily sufferings, connecting to different social and clinical discourses.

However, as many pains as menstruation can cause to women’s bodies, its relationship with illness is always ambiguous. On the one hand, without clear and sufficient clinical guidelines, symptoms that women’s bodies suffer during menstruation often end up in self-treatment. For example, women who have menstrual cramps take over-the-counter medication such as ibuprofen or naproxen to relieve pain. Therefore, without official clinical documents, they are not qualified for excused absences and still considered as being able to perform, even sometimes they are in severe adverse health conditions. On the other hand, equating painful menstrual periods with illness can also be problematic at a structural level, which will potentially posit a patriarchal discourse when women’s bodies are weaker and more vulnerable than men’s bodies, as we see in Sanabria’s ethnographic work about Brazilian women’s menstrual oppression for being “man up” (2015). Moreover, while women’s bodies suffer from painful menstruation, they are also concerned about amenorrhea — the absence of menstruation — for the consequence of hormone disorders, unintended pregnancy, or menopause. The unshakable connections between menstruation and fertility uphold the beliefs that women who have amenorrhea are “ill” for not having reproductivity.

As Darghouth et al. (2006) would suggest in their study about women’s headaches in Peru, the illness interpretations are located through individual bodies and spatial contexts, of which boundaries between diseases, bodies, households, and environments need to be delicately handled. Similarly, menstruation is suffering that demands inquiries through a social and spatial lens. Women’s painful menstrual periods are not merely confined to the individual and clinical domains. It brings about our attention to broader social issues related to women’s health justice. At a structural level, women’s sufferings of painful menstruation are exacerbated by institutions such as social welfare systems, familial factors, and media. Menstruation has been portrayed in public discourse as the symbol of fertility, whereas painful menstrual periods are ignored. For example, most of the current social welfare do not allow for paid period leave for women; even in some companies where the paid period leave is applied, women have limited duration for the leave. Also, in households with same-sex couples, the need for domestic labor imposes trains upon women’s sufferings during menstrual periods, where women constantly take on shares of household chores and childcare. In addition, the public sphere avoids the discourse of women’s menstrual sufferings — generally, menstruation is such a private, and even dirty topic that occupied less media attention.

Although the painful menstrual period is universal suffering for all women, it is noted that power dynamics interplaying between social sufferings and social class create various bodily experiences among women of different social statuses. Women of marginalized groups endure more struggles and tensions on a daily basis during painful menstrual periods compared to their counterparts of higher socioeconomic status. For women of marginalized groups, their sufferings of painful menstruation are reinforced by the “violence of everyday life” (Darghouth et al., 2006): they have fewer resources for clinical treatments, nor will they have the power to negotiate for fewer workload during periods under the circumstances of poverty.

The following set of photos, taken in different social settings, attempts to reveal women’s suffering during painful menstrual periods. By creating this photo essay, I seek to tell a story that has seldom been told, that can echo among women with their strains, struggles and frustration. I applied a spatial lens, examined daily experiences — daily violence in particular, and attempted to interpret women’s bodily sufferings during menstruation. I also tried to employ a transnational perspective, as this suffering is universally shared, and probably enhances solidarity across women of various cultural contexts. I ask: how do our experiences in painful menstruation combine with broader social contexts? How should we handle the delicate relationship between menstrual pains and illness? I hope this photo essay can serve as a starting point to explore women’s bodily suffering in menstrual pains.

The painful menstrual period is universal bodily experience among women, during which women try to maintain “normal bodies” by taking self-treatment. Social contexts and structural strains increase women’s struggles and tensions in the sufferings.

Mother’s day flowers are placed nearby sanitary pads at the pharmacy. Periods are strongly link with motherhood and productivity. Commercialization educates us to be proud of our menstruation and the ability to give birth the new life, while the pain is always overlooked.

Menstrual cramp soothing teas from different countries: Korea, Japanese, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Painful menstrual cramps become a shared experience. Only women can understand each others suffering in painful period cramps. We share the pain, and we share solidarity.

A scene of a sanitary bin in the ladies’ room, indicating an unspoken rule which is shared by women, and of which men will not know.

A Woman is lying down on the bed using a hot water bottle, her body twisted because of heavy cramping. For some, they cannot be present at work because of pains. However, unlike other illnesses and diseases, of which doctors’ documents are easy to obtain, you can never get a clinical document to make an excused absence — because you are not “ill”.

Women waiting in the OB/GYN for a menstrual examination. Long waiting time and unpleasant clinical experiences exacerbate women’s daily sufferings in pain.

One clinical counter in Planned Parenthood, one of the largest NGOs of women’s productive health in America. During the pandemic, patients were not allowed to have company. Women without fluent English speaking skills, such as undocumented immigrants, had to go through medical examination and conversations alone and helplessly.

Aubra, a combination hormone medication used to prevent pregnancy, is considered one method for reducing period pains. However, without health insurance, it is not affordable for some women of marginalized groups.

While menstruation is strongly related to the social meanings of dirt and filth, it is so uniquely and commonly shared by all women that we gain collective strength through talking and attending to our painful menstrual periods.

Reference

Darghouth, Sarah, Duncan Pedersen, Gilles Bibeau, and Cecile Rousseau. “Painful languages of the body: Experiences of headache among women in two Peruvian communities.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 30, no. 3 (2006): 271–297.