Period
Kate Clancy
Princeton Univ., $27.95
In a February golf tournament, after Tiger Woods hit his ball farther on the ninth tee than Justin Thomas, Woods handed Thomas a tampon. Get it? Thomas is weak! Haha.
Contrast this with the viral videos of writhing men hooked up to a menstrual cramp simulator created to bring awareness to period pain. When CBS News correspondent Jamie Yuccas’ producer tried the simulator set at the pain level Yuccas regularly experiences, he was visibly distressed. “Are you serious? This is your baseline?” he said, with a following comment bleeped out.
There probably aren’t enough cramp simulators to enlighten everyone who doesn’t menstruate. But here’s another option: Hand them a copy of Kate Clancy’s Period: The Real Story of Menstruation. Better yet, give this book to everyone. Getting accurate information about the why and how of periods is difficult even for those who do menstruate. There remains considerable stigma and revulsion toward this physiological event that half the population experiences during a large portion of life.
Clancy, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, studies the impact of environmental stressors on the physiology of menstruating people. In Period, she lays out the science of menstruation along with details on the reproductive cycle and the uterus. She also challenges readers to think about the research climate, dominated by white men, that has shaped the views of menstruation and the female reproductive system (SN: 4/9/22, p. 29).
“Given anthropology’s history of removing women from the hero myths of human evolution or never noticing their worth in the first place,” Clancy writes, “menstruation is worth a closer look.”
For example, Clancy lays out emerging evidence on menstrual priming, the idea that each time the body prepares the lining of the uterus for a possible embryo and then repairs the lining during menstruation,…
Read the full article here