Menstruation and Femininity

Filed in archive Menstruation on April 25, 2007

How do you view your monthly cycle? Is it a time to dread? Do you wish you cold banish all the pads and tampons that go with it? Or do you welcome it as a symbol of your fertility, a badge of your femininity?

According to an article in the San Jose Mercury News, that is just how some women view menstruation. That's why a new birth control pill that will eliminate menstruation entirely is being greeted with mixed feelings:

"My concern is that the menstrual cycle is an outward sign of something that's going on hormonally in the body," said Christine Hitchcock, a researcher at the University of British Columbia. Hitchcock said she worries about "the idea that you can turn your body on and off like a tap."

That viewpoint is apparently one reason some already available birth control pills that can enable women to have only four periods a year have not captured a larger share of the oral contraceptive market.

Lynn F. commentd on this in the New York Times:

Menses is the hallmark of womanhood - and what I had once considered inconvenient, I now sometimes feel I'm that much closer to the other end of the spectrum where hot flashes assault.

I'm not surprised to hear that many women reject giving up this aspect of our bodies which is truly feminine.