Period.. Emma Barnett

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СКАЧАТЬ were made to feel like a new inconvenience, but one I could totally handle. Yet so many girls suffer in ignorance and silence during their first period, establishing an embarrassment they carry for the rest of their lives.

      My period was also on the conversational menu at school if I wanted it to be. My girls-only school – Manchester High School for Girls, where Emmeline Pankhurst sent her strong-willed daughters – may not have given any of us the full biological low down until we were a bit older, but the largely female staff were always receptive to chats about the red stuff. (Especially the sceptical swimming teachers who listened to our tales of gore, fake and real, as we soon learned the quickest way to dodge the icy school pool was by saying we ‘had a really heavy period’. Finally, a benefit!)

      Soon, though, this was a reality for me. After my relatively pain-free maiden bleed, my period quickly became a much darker experience. Clots and crippling cramps were my new norm and I found myself wincing in pain for the first two days of every cycle. My mum, who I soon learned also suffered painful heavy bleeds and was upset that history was repeating itself, was swiftly on the case.

      Interestingly, I felt I could openly confide my fears to my mum but I didn’t feel I could, or should, talk about it with most of my friends – and not just because some girls were jealous, I now realise. Whilst I was prescribed contact lenses at a similar age, it felt like something I could openly bitch and moan about, no matter how insecure I felt. My period, not so much. Even when I rushed to the school loos in crippling pain, and tried to explain why to my peers, their blushing cheeks meant that I was already being socialised to keep quiet about my period. If this is what it’s like in a girls-only environment, is it any wonder that we’ve all stayed silent for so long? And I didn’t even get teased by horny pre-pubescent boys about smelling or being frigid because I was ‘on the blob’ – unlike the experiences of so many girls I know who had brothers or went to mixed schools.

      Around my twelfth birthday, when the monthly pains really set in, I spoke up again to my mum, refusing to believe my debilitating experience was normal and was swiftly taken to the GP who prescribed strong period-specific painkillers called mefenamic acid. I have vivid memories of both parents soothing me, as I writhed around in my bed and found myself with the runs, hobbling to the loo (yet another side-effect of periods that remains a taboo subject).

      The point is, I had the period confidence to do this and suffer openly (at home at least).

      I was made to feel proud on the day I bled for the first time, rather than dirty and ashamed.

      Periods weren’t taboo with the few adults in my immediate daily life. I realise now, in my early thirties, how enlightened and important that reaction was. Another friend’s parents broke out into a congratulatory song in front of her brother and his pal, when she started. While she was mortified, just as I would be (not because of the subject but actually because I loathe spontaneous group singing) it also instilled within her a sense of happiness and achievement on her first period day.

      I was always encouraged to talk about my feelings – something which has stood me in good stead for becoming a broadcaster. But that doesn’t mean my friends and I fully understood our periods, as evidenced by our rather disastrous attempt to help a girl insert her first tampon aged sixteen on a school trip. More of that to come …

      However, the open attitudes both at home and in my schooling, and being encouraged from an early age to challenge boys at every opportunity – especially on the school bus when ‘banter’ was at the girls’ expense and was often regarding matters of puberty – led to me possessing something so few women and girls have: period pride.

      I mentioned it in the previous chapter. But stop for a moment to consider the phrase. It consists of two words you don’t often associate with one another – let alone see written down together. And that’s what I would really like to inspire in you. I want to infect more women with period pride and, in turn, cure men of their need to retch when the topic arises.

      Period pride doesn’t mean you have to enjoy your period. I certainly never do. My periods have been defined by bone-grinding pain; I have never been one of those women who breezed through their monthly bleed. It wasn’t something I felt I could or should ever ignore.

      At school, I didn’t talk about my period much, though I found it odd that no one else was screaming about this strange monthly occurrence. The only place I found any more information about it was within the comforting pages of Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, in which the protagonist begs God for her period to come so she can be normal. Incidentally, this tome is one of the most challenged and banned books from US children’s libraries – make of that what you will. ‘Put up and shut up,’ was the vibe around periods.

      Once our paltry sex education kicked in when I was around 13 or 14, they were only spoken of in the truest biological sense. No mention was made of our hormones, moods or other parts of our bodies and mind. The tone was also rather glum, portraying it all as a bloody cross to bear rather than something faintly ludicrous, or an experience to exalt in any way. Had just one teacher broken ranks to tell us her worst leak story, we might have at least enjoyed a giggle at our shared shedding of innards.

      Unfortunately, there was not that kind of female solidarity at my school, nor really thereafter, but that didn’t dent my natural period pride. In fact, I became even less meek about occasionally busting out some of my period’s greatest hits to my appalled male and female university housemates and, later, to my closest pals and colleagues. Even now, my husband, despite often being a better feminist than me, still occasionally wrinkles his nose in squeamish disgust.

      My openness about my period is why I found it uncontroversial, perhaps weirdly easy in fact, when I made a spot of broadcasting history on 19 May 2016. You see, I am the first person, certainly in the UK, to look down the barrel of a camera lens on a popular 24-hour news channel and unashamedly utter the words: ‘I’m menstruating, right now.’

      The TV programme? The Pledge, a free-talking evening panel debate show I used to co-present on Sky News. The reason? I wanted to debate menstrual leave in the workplace. And the panel? Duly horrified.

      The subject was in the news that week because a small Bristol-based company, aptly called Coexist, had become the first in the country to introduce a ‘period policy’ in a bid to help its large female workforce be more productive. Practically, this meant employees could take time away from the office around their menstrual cycles and work more flexibly at that time of the month, instead of – as the boss put it – being hunched over their desks in pain.

      Menstrual leave is a common policy across large parts of Asia but has yet to catch on as a Western phenomenon and I had very mixed views about it. While I applauded the concept of breaking the taboo around periods, and giving women the option to work more flexibly during heavy or difficult bleeds, I also loathed the idea of periods being weaponised against women as a badge of weakness in the workplace. Or, that it could become a fashionable policy, writing off our periods like some politically-correct fad, something that is simply a ‘hot topic of the moment’ only then to be forgotten and glossed over.

      I soon realised I could use my lack of squeamishness about my own periods to great effect. I had the chance to kick off a real debate and duly wrote my autocue script with a wry smile on my face, knowing it would get a reaction. My wonderful producer, always encouraging of anything that would enliven our conversations, was thrilled, almost titillated. I was happily putting myself out there, the subject was fresh, and she knew it would expose divisions in our diverse panel СКАЧАТЬ