by Kate Farrell
I don’t have an endearing first-period story.
Look, I don’t know about your family, but mine wasn’t about to throw me a party commemorating the day that I started bleeding out of my vagina. God, the thought of my dad even knowing what a period was or that his only child had one made me want to die as a kid, and it low-key still does now. As far as I’m concerned, puberty never happened and I’m okay with keeping it that way, thank you very much.
Instead, my recollections of my first period go a little something like this: I woke up one summer morning, noticed a ruddy-brown substance in my underwear, and immediately went into full denial mode. I spent the entire day in disbelief. I tried to make a convincing case to my mom about how I didn’t, in fact, just start my period. It was all a fluke, some weird mistake, some pre-period period to keep my guard up. My mom gave me a panty liner just in case, but even then I could hear the skepticism in her voice when she pretended to agree with me. We met up with a friend and her mom to see a soon-to-be-forgotten PG-13 comedy—Rat Race—we ate chili cheese fries afterward, and by the end of the day, I’d accepted the truth. I’d started my period, and it was terrible. I spent the rest of that weekend watching Anne of Green Gables on PBS and smothering all of my food in garlic salt.
I was ten years old, going on eleven, and I felt too young to suddenly have to grow up, to be responsible for my body’s maintenance like a mechanic, to head down the path of adulthood, whatever the hell that was. I was a child, the youngest in my class. I just wasn’t ready.
Shortly after that, 9/11 happened.
Abrupt, I know, but whenever I think about my first period, my memories flesh themselves out as follows: underwear horror show, the movie, the plush red leatherette seats of the restaurant where I ate the chili cheese fries, PBS, and September fucking 11. It’s like the quintessential grim millennial coming-of-age story. I went from discovering what it was like to menstruate to learning what a terrorist was within the course of a couple of weeks. From ignorant bodily bliss, to rude awakening, to acceptance, to witnessing the most important geopolitical event in generations and realizing that life was more than Lizzie McGuire reruns.
Again, I was ten years old.
This might come across as a trite comparison, but I really do view these two moments in a combo deal of formative hell. I had anxiety about the world at large and about the rush of blood that would exit my body on a monthly basis, and I felt entirely too young to cope. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that I really was a little too young, and there might have been a reason for that.
One night, just months into this new monthly cycle, I confronted my mother about the travesty. The room was dark and she was alone; the TV glowed pale blue, holding her transfixed face in a gentle caress. I crawled into bed next to her, ready to interrogate her.
“How old were you when you got your first period?”
“Uhh, I think I was ten, like you.”
I groaned. “So this is your fault. You’re the reason I got mine early, too!”
She conceded that this might be true, and while I held tight to this absurd resentment for years, until my periods became more manageable as a teenager, it took far longer before I realized that I was a statistic, part of the increasing number of people who are starting their period at younger ages.
Several studies indicate that, across the board, people—particularly young girls—are starting puberty earlier. A New York Times article profiling precocious puberty noted that major pediatric institutions agree that girls’ breasts are budding at younger ages; the most surprising finding was that by age seven, 23 percent of black girls have started developing breasts compared to just 10 percent of white girls, 15 percent of Latina girls, and 2 percent of Asian girls. The average age of starting menstruation declined dramatically in the twentieth century, probably because of better health and nutrition, but has mostly held steady at 12.5 years old in the United States for the last forty years. But it’s worth noting that black American girls in particular tend to start their periods earlier than any other racial demographic. Theories abound as to why this is happening; some suggest childhood obesity can trigger puberty, while others suggest childhood stress, and both doctors and granola moms cite endocrine disruptors—chemical compounds that mimic estrogen, found in everything from pesticides to food—as potential culprits. Whatever the cause, puberty is becoming a reality for many of us once we’re barely out of third or fourth grade. What does that mean for young black girls in America?
Short-term, starting puberty earlier can trigger hormonally charged mood swings and stress for young black girls who are ill equipped to handle PMS or the responsibility of menstruation. Couple that with the fact that black girls already face racist stigma regarding behavioral issues—young black girls are suspended and expelled from school at a higher rate than their peers—and you have a recipe for disaster: expectations of disruptive behavior based on racist stereotypes and actual inability to compartmentalize moody moments. One can be eleven years old with the body of a sixteen-year-old, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have a sixteen-year-old brain.
Another alarming factor of black girls developing early is the West’s judgmental attitude toward them. According to a study conducted by the Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality, adults view black girls as less innocent and requiring less nurturing and protection than white girls. Additionally, this study showed that adults view black girls’ bodies as more grown and inherently sexual than white girls of the same age. Yes, there’s a history of blatant desexualization as well, as seen in popular African American archetypes like the Mammy: kindly, unthreatening—and sex? Foreign concept. But I’m going to touch on the Jezebel archetype: promiscuous, deviant, fast, trouble. These are all descriptions that are far too often applied to young black girls. I mean, just a short perusal of social media exposes this; a group of black girls can’t even post a video of themselves dancing without being called hoes and being subjected to respectability politics. Add a dash of early-onset puberty and, bam, even more sexual shame and perhaps even higher rates of sexual assault. Carolyn M. West touches on this in her essay “Mammy, Sapphire, and Jezebel: Historical Images of Black Women and Their Implications for Psychotherapy.” She states that black women report a higher proportion of attempted sexual assault and that victim-blaming attitudes are often compounded for black women.
But wait, there’s more: Starting your period at an early age can be a factor in health problems down the line. Research has shown that those who experience an early period are at a higher risk of developing breast cancer, diabetes, and heart disease; they also have a higher mortality rate if they develop ovarian cancer.
Great. It’s not like being a black girl or woman in America isn’t hard enough without worrying about sexual assault and cancer!
I’M STRUCK BY HOW I VIEWED MY EARLY PERIOD AS A TRUE CURSE, PASSED FROM MOTHER TO DAUGHTER. MORE SPECIFICALLY, BLACK MOTHER TO BLACK DAUGHTER, ALONG WITH THE OTHER SORDID REALITIES OF BLACK WOMANHOOD.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy—proud—to be a black woman, and my days of resenting genetics for plaguing me with an early period and the calamity that came with it are long gone. I still think the girl in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was absolutely nuts for wanting her period so badly—can’t relate, sis! I would have loved to start mine when I had a little more emotional maturity to deal with a tampon. But that beef with my mom’s uterus is long gone. Still, I think back to that night as a child, in bed with my mom, the TV glow, my anguish, her helplessness … and I’m struck by how I viewed my early period as a true curse, passed from mother to daughter. More specifically, black mother to black daughter, along with the other sordid realities of black womanhood. I wonder if it’s all some twisted rite of passage, passing the trauma torch with a dash of hormonal fuckery for added flavor. But maybe there’s a way to make this less of a curse—less of a cataclysmic prelude to life as a black woman—and more of an opportunity to bring healthy
awareness to the realities of what’s to come. I don’t have a blueprint on the least traumatic way to inform a young black girl about misogynistic anti-blackness or the discomfort of rocking a pad in elementary school. But if I have a daughter, I intend on finding a way to be transparent without being too horrifying. If she feels intimidated by the overwhelming menstrual maintenance, I’ll assure her that it really does get better. If someone treats her body with disrespect, I’ll assure her that her body isn’t an object of shame. If she’s unfairly deemed a troublemaker or a bad influence for merely speaking her mind or having the audacity to cop an attitude while she’s PMSing, I’ll assure her that she’s not the monster this society thinks she is. It’s not a cure-all—there isn’t one—but all I can assure my daughter is support for her bloody, black, and hopefully bright future.
The Homeless Period: It Doesn’t Bear Thinking About and That’s the Problem
KYLYSSA SHAY
There are a lot of things I’d rather forget about from my time spent being homeless; my menstrual periods are certainly one of them. Periods aren’t particularly pleasant to put up with anyway, but adding the complication of homelessness brings inconvenience to the level of misery.
Human beings prefer to be clean. It affects how they feel, physically and emotionally, and how people treat them. Having a period while homeless is more disturbing, upsetting, and crude than having a period while homed and possessed of all the gleaming white cotton and superabsorbent miracles modern society has to offer.
On the street, it’s also an unpleasant reminder of vulnerability. Nothing else so absolutely ordinary reminds you that you have a vagina—something other people are quite willing to viciously harm you for—quite like having a period while homeless. When you’ve suffered indignity heaped upon indignity compounded by lack of sleep and the apparent absence of all human love from your world, the only thing you can realistically hope to hang on to is a desire to handle what you can’t avoid with grace.
TOILET PAPER DOESN’T CUT IT, FOLKS
People with uteruses have been dealing with blood, fluids, and tissue coming from between their legs since before Homo sapiens were even a thing. They have used moss, feathers, leaves, wool, natural fibers, old cloth, milkweed fluff, and probably dozens of other things to soak up their monthly spills of uterine lining. So you’d think toilet paper would be the Holy Grail compared to an old handkerchief or a wad of reindeer moss. It is and it isn’t.
The toilet paper you have in your home has been gently handled since you’ve gotten it, hasn’t it? It hasn’t gotten wet and it certainly hasn’t gotten dirty. That stuff wouldn’t be too bad for swabbing below the decks and plugging any leaks. It’s still a pain in the arse to keep in place when used as a sanitary napkin and not easy to remove when used as a tampon.
But the toilet paper homeless women have access to isn’t nice toilet paper; it isn’t your toilet paper. It’s often stored open in dirty back rooms or alleys. It’s been lugged around and set down anywhere before the maintenance person gets it to the restroom.
HAVING A PERIOD WHILE HOMELESS IS MORE DISTURBING, UPSETTING, AND CRUDE THAN HAVING A PERIOD WHILE HOMED AND POSSESSED OF ALL THE GLEAMING WHITE COTTON AND SUPERABSORBENT MIRACLES MODERN SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER.
After it’s been installed, it’s been touched by strangers who’ve gotten feces, urine, or menstrual blood on their hands. It also receives a filthy baptism of vaporized dirty toilet water on it every time someone flushes.
You don’t even want to wipe with public bathroom toilet roll anymore now, do you? Imagine that definitely nonsanitary stuff making rude contact with the lady parts of someone you love. The vagina is like the perfect warm, moist petri dish for growing all the bacteria that public restroom toilet paper brings to the panty party.
IRREGULAR ACCESS TO BATHROOMS
So public bathrooms aren’t perfect, but they do tend to have running water and a small amount of privacy. Unfortunately, most homeless people lack safe, reliable access to bathrooms for many reasons. Businesses close, government buildings close, public toilets close, and homeless shelter bathrooms have lines and other restrictions, assuming one can get into a shelter in the first place and chooses to do so. Showers are even harder to get access to than toilets. When they are available, they’re often as unsanitary as the average gas station bathroom in a bad neighborhood, and may cost money to use. If you can’t get a shower but once a week, you may start to develop a less-than-fresh feeling in your nether regions when the red tide comes in.
PADS AND TAMPONS COST MONEY … AND SO DOES FOOD
We all have to make choices, but some of them are just too hard to properly prioritize when one is sleep-deprived, hungry, dirty, and blorping out bodily fluids that need hygienic disposal. Menstruating homeless people find themselves with a nasty joke of a math story problem, and it has no correct answer, only slightly less wrong ones, often when they’re in no state of mind to make good choices even if there were any. I’ll admit, I considered shoplifting tampons when I was homeless. With less than a dollar in my pocket, there was no way I could buy them. But I could also imagine all too well how upsetting it would be to be arrested for stealing tampons.
HOMELESS PEOPLE HAVE LIMITED WARDROBES
If you get a bit of red on your designated period panties, you can change into another pair and spray the dirty ones with stain remover or even toss them in the sink for a wash. But a homeless woman will quickly run out of changes of whatever item of clothing gets stained if she has to carry all her possessions around with her. Those little period accidents are also a lot less frequent when you have access to enough pads or tampons to change them as often as needed.
LACK OF SLEEP AND ROUGH SLEEPING INCREASES CRAMPING, PAIN, FATIGUE, AND HEADACHES
A homed woman can go to bed at night with a heating pad or hot-water bottle and an overnight pad with wings stuck in her most comfy granny panties. She can take a Midol, maybe have a cup of hot tea and a nibble of dark chocolate, and go off to sleep in comfort in her favorite jammies.
A homeless woman may not be able to sleep at night at all because she’s on constant alert for predators. She may already be sore from sleeping on the ground, and she has no hot-water bottle and no cupboard with a bottle of Midol and a selection of teas in it. Homelessness almost guarantees sleep deprivation, which is proven to harm pain processing.
HOW ABOUT HELPING OUT?
It would have been a kind thing if anyone had helped me out with period products when I was homeless. No one did, but you can do it for someone else.
You can help the homeless people in your area deal with periods by donating pads, tampons, hand sanitizer, and cleansing wipes to your local homeless charities and food banks. You can also make and distribute hygiene kits yourself.
WHAT TO PUT IN A PERIOD KIT
There are a number of options when it comes to making period care kits for people with insufficient access to running water. All kits should contain hand sanitizer and cleansing wipes. There are a few choices to make after that.
I’ve given examples of a few different kinds of kits to give you some ideas of how to make up a few yourself, if you so choose. Please keep in mind that these are just ideas and however you use them is good.
These kits can be assembled in quart- or gallon-sized Ziploc bags to keep their contents safe and dry.
#1 Super Basic Street Period Kit
hand sanitizer
cleansing wipes
a package of pads or a package of tampons
#2 Kit Idea
hand sanitizer
cleansing wipes
a package of pads
a package of tampons
#3 Kit Idea
hand sanitizer
cleansing wipes
a package of pads
a package of tampons
a pack of panty liners
a bottle of pain reliever
#4 More Eco-Conscious Kit Idea
hand sanitizer
cleansi
ng wipes
a menstrual cup
printed instructions for use
THE TYPES OF PADS, TAMPONS, AND OTHER HEALTH AND HYGIENE ITEMS I THINK ARE BEST FOR THESE KITS AND WHY
PADS:
The thin, individually wrapped pads with wings are the best all-around choice for pads to include in a care package for homeless people. They are less likely to chafe when a person is doing a lot of walking, and the wings help them stay stuck to panties through a lot of moving about. They also work for light or heavy days, and the individual wrappers help protect the pads and keep them clean until they’re ready to be used. Overnight pads that are longer may also be advantageous because they provide more coverage, reducing the possibility of leaks.
TAMPONS:
While tampons without applicators may be better for the environment, they are a bit dicey to insert with fingers that may not be sparkling clean and minty fresh. So I’d highly recommend tampons with applicators that are individually wrapped in plastic to keep them clean and pristine as new-fallen snow until needed.
PANTY LINERS:
Any individually wrapped, unscented panty liner with decent adhesive that covers most of the bottom of the liner is a good thing. Liners with very little adhesive coverage have a tendency to come loose, so they should be avoided. Scented liners can irritate and may not smell good to the person who gets them. Scented liners also may serve as a reminder that another choice has been made for you in an already out-of-control world.
MENSTRUAL CUPS:
Any menstrual cup that’s made of silicone and has an easy-to-grip removal stem would be a good choice. Silicone is good because the cup can be heat-sterilized if necessary; it’s pliable and long-lasting, too. Cups that come with sturdy storage containers are always a plus.