A History of Periods, Politics and Emoji Pants by Fay Bound Alberti

On a bitter cold day in January 2018, a woman died in Nepal after she was forced to live in a menstruating hut. She had been banished to the unheated hut for the duration of her period, a still-common practice in Nepal, despite the fact that the weather often falls below zero degrees celsius in the winter. The woman died from smoke inhalation after she lit a fire to try to get warm. 

A menstruating hut in Nepal

This sad story was announced soon after the publication of an article on the politics of periods that I wrote for a new online literary magazine called  Boundless. Dedicated to long-form writing and edited by the incomparable Arifa Akbar, former Independent literary editor, it's a fantastic resource, and one that I urge readers to check out. 

My article considered why periods are so shameful when they are such a natural part of human existence. Most major belief systems, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, place restrictions on menstruating women. Leviticus 15:19 and 24 states: ‘if a woman has an emission, and her emission in her flesh is blood, she shall be seven days in her [menstrual] separation, and anyone who touches her shall be tamei…[ritually unclean] until evening.’ Followers of the Qur'an regard menstruation as ‘an impurity’, often banning menstruating women from religious and social practices. In the Christian tradition, menstruation and pain in childbirth was God’s punishment when Eve tempted Adam. This is the origin of the 'curse', a term still used for menstruation.

The creation of Eve (Wellcome Images)

Menstruation has not been considered 'proper history' in the past. That is, before the 1970s and women's history, family history and medical history found new ways of redressing the gender and class imbalance of traditional history and exploring new sources. There remains a limit to what we know about menstruation in the ancient world, however, since records of the time were taken by men. They therefore didn't record women's cycles, or consider what 'normal' might have been. Ancient Egyptian women are said to have used cloths on sticks to stem the flow, or wedges of papyrus, a plant-based material also used to make paper. Classical books talked about 'wombfuls' of blood, but were not specific about how much blood a woman might have lost. 

In keeping with religious concerns about menstruation,we do know that classical writers worried about women's association with witchcraft, the natural world and spiritualism. Pliny the Elder, a Roman author and philosopher, believed that menstruating women could prevent hailstorms and protect crops. Period blood was not always depicted as revolting; ancient Egyptians may have included menstrual blood in medical recipes. 

Pliny the Elder, killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, AD 79

What did women do without Tampax? The same as they do in most of the world today. Ragged cloths that were washed seems the likely option, especially in medieval times, and this explains the modern term 'on the rag' to describe a menstruating woman. It is likely that poor women with little access to hot water had little option but to use and reuse the same rag, or to bleed on their clothes. By the nineteenth century there was more concern about hygiene, and more 'scientific' language by which the female body and menstruation was understood. 

Sanitary belts were created by the end of the nineteenth century, and washable pads could be attached to the belt. By the 1980s, adhesive strips on sanitary towels and tampons were more popular. But this did not mean that the shame around women's bodies and menstruation was reduced. In the modern West, menstruation remains shrouded in disgust and shame, even where scientific explanations show it to be a natural biomedical process rather than related to magic or divinity.

Early 20th-century newspaper advert for a sanitary belt

Consider European popular culture, which has many slang words for periods, few of them positive. English examples are Aunt Flo, Bloody Mary, Code Red, The Blob and Shark Week; while the French included La semaine Ketchup (ketchup week), VHS (vaginalement hors service), Les chutes du Niagra (Niagra Falls). And in German:  Die rote pest (the red pest) and Besuchvon Tante Rosa (a visit from Aunt Rose). 

It's not just periods, but women who are on their periods that are the subject of disempowering language. Menstruating women are ‘PMS-ing’, ‘On the Blob’ or ‘Out of Service’. Jokes about menstruation depict periods as a disruptive force that lessens women’s intellectual capacities, and reduces them to their biological function. 

In schools, children are taught a basic biomedical model: each month the uterine lining thickens and becomes vascularized in case an egg is fertilised. If it is not, the unused blood is released as a period. Boys and girls (and boys are usually excluded from the classroom) are not taught the psychological, social or cultural contexts of menstruation, of the constituents of period blood, of the different cycles girls might experience, or how cycles can differ between girls. Menstruation simply marks girls and women apart as different and, in some contexts inferior, like the poor girl who died in Nepal, or the thousands of women from developing countries who cannot attend school because they do not have sanitary supplies. 'Period poverty' is also a problem in the UK. 

It's striking how little we have progressed from nineteenth-century ideas about menstruation, which is where much of our language of the body comes from. Victorian medics were convinced that menstruation weakened women, providing evidence of their biological and spiritual inferiority. Women were already regarded as hysterical because of their ‘wandering wombs’ that caused havoc with women’s mental and physical health. Walter Heape, the anti-suffragist and Cambridge zoologist, drew attention to the terrifying spectacle of menstruation, that left behind ‘a ragged wreck of tissue, torn glands, ruptured vessels, jagged edges of stroma, and masses of blood corpuscles.’ Menstruating women couldn’t possibly tackle work, education or intellectual concerns, argued prominent Victorian writers, which women like Mary Wollstonecraft did much to tackle.

Discussions of periods used economic languages of production in the industrial age, with women’s bodies as baby-making factories: profitable or unprofitable, depending on their ability to produce. If conception was the proper result of the menstrual cycle, menstruation was failed production. The tissue lost during menstruation was ‘debris’ and waste. Early pregnancy failure was a ‘blighted ovum’, a womb that opened up too soon, an 'incompetent cervix'. 

Scientific medicine still talks about menstruation in these terms. The social meaning of menstruation also takes on different emphases throughout a woman’s life, highlighting the demand for youth in the modern West – at least for women. For an individual, menopause, or the literal stopping of the menses, might bring all kinds of exciting new opportunities into a woman's life. Yet in narrowly biomedical terms, it signals her lack of reproductive competence, and her social and sexual irrelevance. Menopausal women have a tendency to become invisible. 

In all kinds of areas, 21^st century women campaign for more social visibility, and equity with regard to their bodies, including around menstruation. In the digital age, new opportunities arise for us to talk about periods and how they are framed in society. For example, isn’t it extraordinary, given the fact that the average woman menstruates for 3,000 days, that there is no symbol for menstruation? There are, after all, emojis for everything from crystal balls to sushi, from faeces to tears. This is why the charity Plan International UK has been campaigning for a period emoji to allow people to communicate more openly. Nearly 55,000 people voted. The winner? A pair of white pants, decorated with two drops of blood.

The world's first period emoji, courtesy of Plan International 

Finding spaces to talk about menstruation in its own right and not as linked to fertility is important – and not only to avoid biological reductionism. The presumption that menstruation equals fertility and womanhood excludes women born without wombs as well transgender woman. It excludes women who choose not to have children, or are unable to have children. 

Reframing how we talk about the body, and rejecting historical ideas that are outmoded or reductive, is not new. Since the 1970s, the shaming and silencing of menstruation has been subverted. Feminist artists initially made periods visible. Judy Chicago’s ‘Menstruation Bathroom’ (1972), showcased a bin filled with used sanitary towels. In the 1990s, Tracy Emin casually disposed of used tampons in ‘My Bed’ (1998), described as ‘a violent mess of sex and death’. In 2015 Kiran Ghandi ran the London marathon while menstruating, and without using tampons or pads, to highlight menstrual stigma. And in 2017 the #BloodNormal campaign won the right to use red rather than blue fluid in menstrual product advertising. This important step demystifies the idea and image of period blood, and marks a shift towards normalizing menstruation. 

Periods are political, as their history shows. Which is why we need more education about what is 'normal' or abnormal, more discussion about the differences between women, and better metaphors for women's bodies that aren't based on outdated ideas of the factory. When it comes to the history and experience of menstruation we need less shaming, and more talking. Period.

 

Joel Filipe, on Unsplash.com

My website: www.fayboundalberti.com
Twitter: @fboundalberti 

Down among the archives: the joys of research (part 2) by Christina Koning

One of the joys of doing research is the incidental stuff one comes across while doing it: snippets of information; details of the ‘way they lived then’ which, thought inconsequential in themselves, can make the past come alive. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in the archives at the London Library, reading through copies of The Times for the period I’m working on - the late 1920s to the early 1930s - and enjoying myself very much in the process. What I’m looking for I’m not quite sure - but I know it when I see it.

It might be the following headline which has caught my eye: ‘Big Game Hunter Sent For Trial’, and the following account of a case in which the accused, Thomas Henry Sarl, ‘described as a big game hunter, of Vivian-road, Wembley,’ was charged, on January 3rd, 1929, with ‘attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm on his brothers-in-law, Basil and Cecil Smith, of Litchfield-grove, Finchley, and further with damaging windows to the extent of £50’. Or this one, from the same month: ‘Willesden Communist Summoned for Desertion’, in which one Hubert Huggins, ‘Communist leader and Secretary of the International Class War Prisoners’ Aid Society’, was summoned for deserting his wife, and moving his private secretary, a Miss Sarah Ball, into the family home at Princess-road, Kilburn. Then there’s this, from August 1929: ‘Authoress Attempts Suicide’, and its subsequent account of what was then regarded as a crime: ’Stephanie Gray, 43, authoress and journalist, and the widow of a naval commander, living in a top back room in Molyneux-street, off Edgware-road, who was in despair because her novel, The Idol, had been rejected by a firm of publishers, attempted suicide by taking a large dose of a popular German sleeping draught, and has appeared before Mr Hay Hackett, of Marylebone Police Court.’

As I’m writing a series of detective stories, my fascination with such material may be readily understood; but I also take a great delight in less obvious minutiae of the period: the advertisements, for example. Since newspapers at the time had very few photographs, most of these ads - for cigarettes, cars, wireless sets, refrigerators, gramophones, and of course clothes - are illustrated with delightful black-and-white line drawings, and described in the most florid of prose. Take this ad from Peter Robinson, for June 1929: ‘Dainty gowns of figured georgette with accordion-pleated panels (6 guineas)’. Or this ‘exquisite gown of crepe de Chine, finished at the waist with a buckle of diamante (8 guineas)’. ‘Harrods,’ we are sternly told in an article from April of the same year, ‘cannot stress the importance of the Little Jacket with Evening Gowns enough… The sleeves of the “coatee” are cut in a new manner. Scarlet and Oyster are particularly smart in this season of colour contrasts…’ At Marshall & Snelgrove, later that month, they are advertising ‘attractive two-piece dresses of floral crepe de Chine with cuffs and vest of pleated Georgette, in black and a few good colours…’ To set off your new dress, why not buy a pair of ‘kid shoes in black suede, with a smart Spanish heel’ at 55 shillings, or a Smart Hat of black Panamalaque straw’, for 65 shillings?Suitably attired in your evening gown of ‘rich satin beaute… cleverly cut to give a slimming line’ at 10 gns, and with your ‘coatlet in a range of colours from Cornflower Blue to Charteuse Green’ at a mere 49/6, you might take yourself to the theatre to see ‘On Approval’ (then packing them in at the Fortune), ‘Lady Luck’ at the Carlton, or ‘The Desert Song’ at Drury Lane. 

If these seemed too tame, you might down a couple of cocktails before taking in the latest Charles Cochrane review, with the racy title of ‘One Damn Thing After Another’. While sitting back to enjoy the show, you might light up a Craven ‘A’ (‘made specially to prevent sore throats’), or a De Reszke, since ‘wherever the right people meet, there also will you meet the right cigarette…’ Or, wearing a ‘dressing-gown of pure silk foulard’ (him) or a ‘rich printed chiffon Tea-frock’ (her), you could relax at home with the papers, keeping up with the details of the latest crime story (the Charing Cross Trunk Murder was enthralling the public that year) or the goings-on of the ‘Smart Set’ in St Tropez (‘Countess Buxton distributed the prizes at the fancy-dress dance at the Grand Hotel. The prize-winners included Lady Alethea Buxton and the Hon. Daisy Dixon…’). You could listen to music on your newly acquired radiogram: ‘Touch a Switch, and Bring the Gayest Dance Bands to Your Home!’ Or you could reach for the latest bestseller, by Ethel M Dell or Elinor Glyn.

Of course, it didn’t do to overdo things. ‘Nerve strain’ seems to have been an ever-present ailment - at least if one believes the ads. ‘Busy Streets Demand Strong Nerves’, asserts one such, adding darkly: ‘the rush and hurry of our town and city life make heavy demands upon the nerves. Tone and vitality is lost…’ Fortunately, help is at hand: ‘Take “Ovaltine” daily.’ Still more alarming is the tone of another: ‘Does the sound of a motorcar backfiring in the street make you jump out of your skin? A nightly dose of Doctor Fuller’s Powders will set you right…’ Given that this was a time of high unemployment and worrying fluctuations in the Stock Market, it seems hardly surprising that a lot of people were feeling jumpy. And of course what was then described as ‘nerve trouble’ might now be called ‘post-traumatic stress’ - a condition with which many of those who had been through the horrors of the First World War would have been all too familiar. 

Interspersed with the more lighthearted stuff - the articles on ‘The Modern Girl and the Cocktail-Drinking Habit’, or reviews of the latest novel by Galsworthy, are those which offer more sombre insights. The front pages of The Times in the late 1920s had no photographs (those were confined to a single page inside the paper) but displayed columns of small ads. A decade after the Armistice, these still included lengthy lists of those who had died ‘On Active Service’, commemorated by their grieving relatives, as well as ads for those seeking work - or in search of domestic servants. Amongst the advertisements for ‘Housemaids’ (‘must be good-tempered’) ‘Cook-Generals’ (‘good references essential’), and ‘Between-maids’ (‘titled family; four servants kept’), one might find poignant items such as the following: ‘Work urgently required by married ex-officer (Indian cavalry) with two children; held position of trust, used to outdoor life; physically fit; excellent references; adaptable.’ Almost a short story in itself.

CLICK FOR HISTORY by Eleanor Updale

I was planning something pretty earnest for this month, but it needed a photo specially taken in London, and a change in my travel plans means it will have to wait for another time.

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING

Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com
via Wikimedia Commons

My first idea for a replacement was something equally worthy.  I thought I’d give an example of how profoundly the Internet has affected the research process.  I was going to illustrate it with the story of my own quest, ten years ago, to find a fragment of a torn 17th century letter, which turned out to be in the archives of an ancient British bank (the main body of the sheet being in Australia). 

Back at the turn of the century (and even though the Internet was beginning to make our lives easier) the shoe-leather side of historical research took ages. We still had to consult card indexes, with all their vulnerability to misfiling, illegibility and loss. Sometimes, a long journey to an archive would result in disappointment: either the thing you were looking for was not there, or there was a policy that only the staff could undertake a search. They were unfailingly helpful and polite, but they were inevitably operating at a disadvantage – not really knowing what you were after, no matter how good the brief; blind to the resonance and inspiration of apparently irrelevant items; prisoners of the little summaries written by the original cataloguers, who had read the documents with the preconceptions and value judgments of their own time. 

 

Photo: Dr. Marcus Gossler, via Wikimedia Commons

Even then, some libraries would communicate only by post, and demanded written references to show that you were entitled to ask a question in the first place.

So much of that has gone.  If anything, the problem now is wading unaided through a superfluity of undersourced information.  But uniting the two halves of that letter would probably be a quick job these days...

... Or so I imagine.  I didn’t get as far as that comparatively simple task.  Instead, caught up in the egg-whisk of the search engine, I hit on the idea of seeking out a digital image of a random 17th century letter from anyone, anywhere, and unpicking it for you. So I put in some very broad search terms (digital, letter, archive, university etc) just to see what would pop out of the Internet Lucky Dip.

 

The very first search result was from Duke University in North Carolina, USA.

As it happens, there are some distinguished researchers in my period there, so I thought it was all ‘meant’, and I clicked on. And that’s when you were rescued from my plan, because what I hit on was the most wonderful archive of AmericanTV advertising.  Duke has put online thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles advertising agency.  They date from the 1950s to the 1980s.

 If you know my book Johnny Swanson, you will understand why my heart leapt.   

Part of the plot of that book is based on 1920s classified ads, so I was already primed to relish diving in to one of the best resources for getting a feel for the social tone of a time and place.

If ever you fancy a lost afternoon, this digital archive is the place to go. It’s the reality behind Mad Men, with all the deification of doctors, flagrant peddling of bogus science, and manipulation of maternal concern.  Everything is interesting: the scripts, the camera angles, the clothes, the narrative structure of the ads, and the extensive exposure of children’s bodies, in a purely innocent way that would be unthinkable today. As you would expect, the unintentional humour trumps any real jokes.

I would love to embed some of the films here, but there are threats about copyright, etc, so here’s the link:

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adviews/

I particularly recommend the ads for Vick’s vapour rub:

http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adviews_vicks/

Of course, my interest was entirely academic and soberly historical (ahem). Duke University is, without doubt, a highly respectable place with a serious and important archive. These advertisments are just as important historical sources as the letter I meant to look for.  But they're fun too.  If you need a bit of a diversion from real life, and don’t mind losing a huge chunk of work time, give this archive a click.

www.eleanorupdale.com