Alexandra Giroux

Young French Females’ Attitude Toward Menstruation

Menstruation in several cultures has been considered with fear and wonder. However, this blood, which regularly flows from the woman, is a totally natural phenomenon that a female experiences usually each month. Only pregnancy, special contraception means, marginal ways of living or some diseases allow the woman to be rid of it. Menstrual blood is a liquid which connotes a variety of symbols, from birth to sexuality. It is the external manifestation of an internal process. While male genitals can easily be shown externally in its apparent form, the female anatomy is more complex as the genital apparatus is internal and kept hidden like a secret. Related to life, death and sex, it is the subject of numerous myths. The key question to be asked is as follows: how is menstruation dealt with in Western society, with a particular focus on the narratives and discourses about menstruation among young French women. Currently it is still a taboo subject because of the influence of our cultural inheritance. Womanhood, femininity and menstruation are sophisticated and mythic construction created by our civilization. Scientists and general practitioners monopolize the discourse about it. Only few academics wrote about this subject in the psychological, sociological and social anthropological fields. The academic knowledge produced in these areas has been dominated by males. The aim of this paper is to hear the women’s voices in order to understand how menstruation, a natural thing, is in fact really cultural. The focus is on French culture in particular, and especially the generation of women who are in their twenties. Four French students living in Scotland have been interviewed in order to explore in a small way this vast topic of menstruation and how it is regarded in developed European societies. The objectives of this work are to understand connotations of the menstrual blood and the behaviour of people towards it, to investigate the theories of some feminists about menstruation, to allow women to talk about their periods in other ways rather than medical ones. Further, it is about analysing this discourse and criticizing our relationship with an understanding of the concept of menstruation. First, this essay puts forward a review which helps to give a broad approach to the topic. Once it has set out the main themes, the methodology, the findings and the discussion of the results are presented. This essay finishes with a reflection on control and how power is exercised over the body of women using the pretext of menstruation.

First, it should be pointed out that France as a multicultural society has been influenced by the habits of different groups. However, traditional beliefs still hold sway. A famous original French belief states that during menstruation, women would not be able to make mayonnaise successfully. It was also long believed that a child conceived during the menses would be red haired, silly or that he would have diseases such as leprosy or ulcers. Religion plays an important part in the way we perceive menstruation. Jewish women must not have sexual intercourse during menstruation and Muslims have to wash themselves in a kind of ritual. In the Old Testament, blood is viewed as unclean. “Inter urinas et faeces nascimur” says the Church (“we are born between urine and faeces”). Fairy tales unconsciously prepare young girls for menstruation. In Snow white, the queen, sewing, pricks her finger with a needle and she decides to have a child with lips as red as blood. The meaning of this extract is that women need to bleed to give birth. It is interesting to stress that menstruation splits the life of the woman in different times, depending on the culture. In France, there are several stages in the life of a female: the girl, the teenager, the woman and the post menopausal woman. All these phases are related to the presence or the absence of menstruation. The post-menopausal woman does not have any menstruation, and so, she is not “useful” anymore for the society in terms of not being able to have babies. The uterus may be seen as a void to be filled. Thus, menstruation would be seen as the proof of a failure. However, it can be as well seen as a success: it is like a reminder that the reproductive system works correctly. Usually, in other time and other places, menstruation was considered as bad, even if it is possible to find some exceptions. A cosmic power has sometimes been given to menstruation: the reason for this has been found in the moon cycles, the seasons or the rhythm of the tides.  In our culture, we are frightened of blood in general because it is related to death or illness, because it is a vector of contamination for diseases. Women often feel pain during menstruation. The etymology of the word “pain” is “poena” means “punishment” in Latin. The concept of PMS is controversial and it could be constructed by culture. De Beauvoir describes menstruation as a hard thing in her well-known book, The Second Sex: “menstruation is painful: headaches, over-fatigue, abdominal pains, make normal activities distressing or impossible” (1949, p.353). As a feminist, it is striking to read that from her hand. Even this really open-minded thinker of the middle of the 20th century stresses only the bad aspects of menstruation in this quote reinforcing all the clichés that we have about it. The way that writers describe menstruation is really important because it has an influence on our perception.

Menstruation is a cultural fact because it is constructed but, most of the time, the discourses that we can find about it are medical discourses. The medical model therefore appears to dominate western discourses over and above social and cultural ones.  At least in print, menstruation is accepted as a normal body process but some consider menstruation as “the weeping of a disappointed uterus” (Jeffcoate 1975, quoted in Laws 1990, p.93). Lots of general practitioners encourage women to have children to get rid of their menstrual pain, as if women had to let their body do what it is intended for. Some of them go further.  Several books have been written by general practitioners on menstruation and even on the ability – or not – to have intercourse during this period of the month. There is as well the idea that hormones would alter women’s behaviour. By using the expression “PMT”, “Premenstrual tension”, general practitioners encourage woman to focus only on the bad aspects of their feelings, before menstruation. General practitioners control the boundaries of the social norm of what constitutes femininity. The institution of science is a social institution where medicine reproduces and legitimates patriarchal values. Women who take the pill bleed each month, but in reality, this blood is only there to mimic the natural cycle and to reassure some women. Currently, some females can decide to get rid of their periods and to choose a pill which does not provoke this artificial bleeding. The attitude toward menstruation is therefore ambiguous: some women want to get rid of it others want to still bleed once a month. Periods play an ambivalent role in our lives as they are something that we can see, something with a huge symbolic significance and something to be hidden.

According to the etiquette of menstruation, women should not make men aware that they are menstruating (Laws 1990, p.29) nor of how they cope with it. Advertisements for sanitary wear are usually politically correct: the blood used is blue, the vocabulary is naïve and nothing is embarrassing. But the expression “sanitary protection” is problematic because it leads people to believe that blood is dirty or dangerous. Currently, some companies even provide some even some protective tins to hide sanitary protection devices, with black pant liner and specific towel to perfume the vulva. In the clean male-centred world of pornography, menstruation, cyprine or any other fluids of the woman are banned. Some feminists have argued that we should positively consider the menarche as a girl’s coming of age. However, nothing has happened to consider the cycle glamorously and respectfully (Greer 1999, p.37). Menstruation can be used to emphasise men’s power over women. The production of this fluid is passive, whereas the production of sperm or urine is active. The menstrual flow can be seen as uncontrolled and unchecked and, by analogy, the woman can be seen like that. So, women seem to be devalued by menstruation but it may be as well an object of jealousy by men because it is the sign of child-bearing ability. While the female’s body is not aimed to serve male sexual desires, menstruation could be seen as a resistance to the man’s will. During her period, the woman would often be thought to be useless and the resistance to having sex could be considered by some men as an invitation to legitimise adultery.

Even though in lots of cultures, menstruation was depreciated, in some of them they had a positive attitude toward it. A research done in 1983 by the World Health Organization among women of all socioeconomic classes in ten countries shows that they see menstruation as a positive event (Delaney J, Lupton MJ and Toth E. 1988, p.14). Moreover, a large majority of them would not voluntarily get rid of it.  Now, some contraceptive devices allow women to control or to get rid of their periods. For the first time, women are able to free themselves from natural determinism. Some feminists have sought to represent menstrual blood in a positive light. These thinkers, who are from “Mai 68” are artists or intellectuals belonging to the “Second Wave” in the sixties. Some artists have tried to remove the complex that we can have about menstruation, by using it at the main point of their work. Orlan, for instance, explains one of her performances: she was using “a huge magnifying glass to show [her] vagina (the pubic hairs on one half were painted blue) during [her] period” and “a video screen showed the head of the man or woman who was about to see another showed the head of women and men who were looking and at the exit, Freud’s text on the head of Medusa was distributed” (Orlan, quoted in Greer 1999, p.38).

This review is the start point of a deeper research focusing on French females. Through this project, the researcher wanted to explore this subject from her own auto-ethnographic perspective also, as well as from the four women chosen as interviewees: Emanuelle, Laetitia, Charlie and Martine. Indeed, all the women interviewed are really similar to her: same gender, same age and same nationality. The thematic analysis of the views on menstruation of the young French women has to be considered also in relation to the feminist standpoint theory which influenced the researcher. Because women are not often asked to talk about the subject of menstruation, their point of view is interesting. In order to understand the real point of view of the subjects, the interview, as a qualitative method of research, was chosen. Most of the books discussed in the literature review present menstruation as a taboo so a one-to-one interview allows the person to feel more confident and to talk more freely. The semi-directive interview is an interesting way to let people talking about what they want. Nevertheless, the French female students who answered the questions cannot be taken as representative of the whole French female population. They are just a few out of the many and may not be typical because they have accepted to talk about menstruation. Indeed, some young women who were asked to participate in this research refused the proposition. They explained that they thought that the subject was too strange or that they would not be comfortable to talk about it.

Through the interviews, four key ideas were systematically discussed by the participants: the women’s link with temporality, their behaviour during menstruation, their relationships with family and friends, and finally the idea of control and power. Menstruation plays an important part in the life of a woman and reflects her link to temporality. Nowadays women live longer and thus experience more menstrual episodes during their life-span. Men’s perception of time is somewhat different because they do not have any periods. Menarche is a key step in the life of a woman. For two of the interviewed women, it was a positive experience and they were happy. For the two others, it was scary and they wanted to hide it. Charlie knew as well what periods were because she had an elder sister. She was happy to have her periods because she had the feeling of being “a whole woman”, like her friends who already all had their menstruation. For all the interviewed young women, the menopause is far away but they have their own idea about how they will react when they won’t have periods anymore. Martine thought that when women have the menopause, they are often retired and they do not have the same link with time as do younger women: when a woman has her periods, she usually knows when the beginning of her cycle is and what day she will begin to bleed. Most of the time women talk about their menstruation when they experience pain and problems, or when it is related to childbearing or contraception. But some women try to make things different. Vanessa Tiegs (2004) for instance wants to produce a positive image of menstruation and paints with her menstrual blood. During her periods, she feels more creative and she expresses the menstrual cycle every month.  All the girls interviewed used pads for their first period, and not a tampon, though some are using this method currently. None of the interviewed women used alternative protections like a menstrual cup, a sea sponge or a tissue towel, because they were not known to them or rejected them because it meant having a closer contact with their own blood.When she has her periods, Emmanuelle tries to avoid practising sport and sometimes, it is so painful that she cannot go to the university. It can be assumed that women may attribute bad moods to being premenstrual. PMS might be considered as a cultural construction and the relationship that women have with their relatives may explain a lot about the construction of our different cultures.

When the young girl has her periods for the first time, a woman plays often the role of the mentor: for Martine and Charlie, it was the grandmother who was present; for Laetitia and Emmanuelle, it was the mother. All say that they would not have talked about it to a man, even though it is someone in the family. Charlie said that she would not talk about it to her father because they have a “blood relation”, which suggests that the blood of the menstruation is seen as having a different connotation than the blood in the veins. Foucault (1981, p.116) explains that sex is concerned with power and surveillance: pedagogy, medicine and economics and so on are perfect surveillance tools. Now, technology is easily associated with the idea of good: using tampons is considered modern. It is important to keep in mind that taking the pill like she does could be thought to be against nature as well as natural is not synonymous with good. The only thing is that women should have access to the information to make up their minds and to decide if they want to have periods or not. Each woman has a special relationship with her general practitioner when it comes to menstruation. Laetitia pointed out that sometimes, when male general practitioners ask this kind of question, they are smiling a little bit. She thinks that it may be considered as a misogynist reaction. Really often, men are those with the medical gaze and women are their helpers, although men themselves cannot go through the female body experience. Women are often the passive victims of the doctor’s ministrations. The pill is both a liberator and a problem for the woman. It gives her more power because she can choose to have babies and periods. But at the same time, it can have negative effects on the body and it reinforces the idea that only women should care about issues surrounding reproduction. Control of reproduction is done through the control of periods and taking the pill is considered as the correct thing to do because it is technological and modern.

To sum up, menstruation is both very present and very absent in our society. Culture plays an important part in its symbolic construction, as much as our perception of menstruation constructs our culture. Usually, the knowledge that we have about it is from the perception of medical knowledge, as an attempt to rationalise a little known subject. The lack of knowledge about it leads lots of men to use their construction of menstruation in relation to their beliefs about women as an argument to depreciate women and to support and therefore perpetuate patriarchal society. In the majority of the cultures, people do not talk a lot about menstruation, except when it is discussed within a scientific discourse. So, women tend to hide it and often leave it in a framework imbued by the negation of their own body. Of course, generalisations must be avoided and some women have a positive approach to their bodies. Through the interviewing of the four French women, the idea of gender relationship was really present. It has been suggested that menstruating women have a different link to temporality than men. Periods appeared to be important because they seemed to be the most obvious evidence that the women can have children. Menstruation is connected with reproduction. The mother who gives life to the daughter is often the same person who will help the young girl with her menarche, a sign that shows that she can be a mother as well. This relationship is privileged and the women cannot all the time talk freely of this subject with their male friends, for instance. Unconsciously, women know that they do not have a huge interest in discussing this subject as it is used as a coercion tool. Jokes, medicalization or even notions of “aberrant” hygiene can be used by them to control the bodies of women. This study may contribute to breaking the taboo and to allowing women to talk about menstruation but the road is long. The more civilized we are, the more distant with our bodies we become.  Menstruation has been made into something horrible by so-called “civilized man”, and different technology devices allow women to control their flow. This is often imposed upon them by cultural restrictions. However, they have the choice: being slaves of technology or being in control. The problem is complex and the power exercised cannot be considered as springing only from man to dominate women. Women perpetuate this taboo. One of the pieces of evidence is the fact that some girls who were asked to take part in the interviews declined the invitation, explaining that the subject was personal. The aim of this essay is not to write an apology of menstruation. Women should have the appropriate information about it. They should be able to use the sanitary protection that they want, they should be able to decide if they really want to take the pill and they should even be able to choose if they want to have their periods.  Tampons or the pill that seemed at first sight to be a revolution for women can finally immure them. The woman’s body has to be rethought and this can be achieved only by the mutual work and commitment of both genders. But some people, most of the time women, try to change our perception of menstruation, in order to have a more positive attitude toward it. If menstruation is not the problem, then attitudes to it could be. Menstruation is often linked up with womanhood alone, but hopefully this is not totally true and they must not be limited by it. Women are more than a womb which has to be filled.

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