Free Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein, Susan Kim Page B

internalized the overriding message that’s still being fed to every woman around the world and throughout history, since birth: that the truly feminine female is the one who is boundlessly patient, as well as impossibly sympathetic, eternally sweet-tempered, and just plain good (whatever the hell that means). While men have pretty much, since time immemorial, been the ones responsible for 99 percent of all violent crimes and 99.9 percent of all wars, it is still the woman who loses her temper who seems to trigger the greatest alarm and harshest condemnation from one and all.
    Why is this? We understand that we, the fairer sex, may not be brimming over with even one-fifth as much chest-thumping testosterone as are the guys, but still, we’re only human, aren’t we? We don’t see men being castigated for their outbursts of anger or their fits of depression, nor do we find many of them losing much sleep about it, either. Anger and despair may not necessarily be the most entrancing of emotions, it’s true, but occasionally, they’re the only appropriate responses to a bad situation—i.e., anything difficult that happens to us when we don’t have enough hours in the day, or money, or help, or sleep.
    When it comes to women, obviously, you can’t talk about anger, anxiety, and depression without also mentioning the 800-pound gorilla in the room. We’re talking about the extra factor that may very well play a mysterious if complex part in our occasionally ungovernable emotions … and that, of course, is PMS.
     
FEMCARE WEIGHS IN ON MOOD SWINGS
Blues sometimes come right before your period. But they don’t always have to come. Some girls expect them … make a habit of them. Smart girls won’t give in to them. They take their minds off themselves … do things they enjoy doing—like dancing, listening to records. They find that doing happy things helps them feel happy—look happy.
—TAMPAX (1966)
 
 
 
Many women imagine they feel worse than they actually do. They get in a dither, or down in the dumps, just by thinking too much about themselves.
—KOTEX (1943)
 
 
Mental attitudes frequently affect bodily functions. Fretting, worry, self-pity can make a person sick and miserable when there is no physical reason for being either. If we dramatize little discomforts … if we think of menstruation as being “sick” or as the “curse” … we only make it unpleasant for ourselves.
—BELTX (1955)
 
 
It’s no coincidence that mothers who complain about menstrual pain have daughters who develop pains, too.
—MODESS (1954)
 
 
A poor mental attitude will do much towards tensing muscles and causing cramps.
—TAMPAX (1966)

     
    So what is PMS, exactly?
    Premenstrual syndrome is defined as a collection of physical and emotional symptoms that appear in the week before one’s period and disappear shortly after flow begins. If you’re American, you probably think all women suffer from PMS, that it’s an inevitable monthly madness that overtakes any female of reproductive age, an inescapable nightmare of bloated bellies, torrents of tears, and snapping tempers. And if you think this, there’s at least one good reason why you do: premenstrual syndrome, not unlike its elderly grandmother, hysteria, has been defined and redefined by numerous experts over the years to the point where it’s a bulging grab bag of symptoms, both physical and emotional, that can afflict, to varying degrees, practically any woman possessing a menstrual cycle. These symptoms, some contradictory, can include not only bloating, headaches, cramps, swollen feet, tender breasts, acne, nausea, weight gain, and fatigue, but also depression, insomnia, sleeplessness, lethargy, anxiety, anger, social withdrawal, difficulty thinking, and (how’s this for a symptom?) a craving for carbohydrates. Since it was first classified, PMS has come to boast more than 150 identified symptoms.
    This, to our jaundiced eye, is what we would call throwing the