Bleeding into 'Womanhood'

 

In the image above, a teen girl is lying on her back on a bed with her legs turned toward the viewer. Her head is resting on cream and white pillows and her right hand rests on her stomach. She is looking to her right with a concerned expression, perhaps indicative of fear or pain. An adult woman, presumably her mother, is sitting on the bed next to the daughter, gazing down at her knowingly with a slight smile. The woman is leaning on her right arm and her left hand is on top of her daughter’s hand, in a gesture of comfort. They are both wearing loungewear; the daughter is wearing a white T-shirt and sweatpants while the mother is wearing a gray long sleeve shirt. The bedsheets are bright white with a faint striped pattern, and a small part of a white button-tufted headboard is visible at the top of the image. The bed and the two figures take up nearly the entire image, and the curved arms of both the mother and the daughter draw attention to the daughter’s stomach. This image is meant to represent the experience of getting your first period, hence the attention to the stomach and focus on the mother-daughter relationship.

In “Purity and Danger,” Mary Douglas utilizes a Durkheimian lens to analyze the practices and rules surrounding dirt and hygiene in various cultures. Arguing against some prominent anthropologists, she rejects the idea that “primitive cultures” are governed by an irrational or neurotic fear of dirt. We see collective patterns of behavior surrounding dirt not because of immaturity or neuroses, but because collective beliefs are superimposed onto the world, and rituals surrounding dirt are a way to affirm the collective logic of a group. In defining dirt as “matter out of place,” Douglas highlights how rules about what may enter and exit the body are relational rather than absolute, and thus reflect each society’s unique classification of what is sacred and profane. The body takes on a great deal of significance when considering dirt and purity. As a bounded but permeable space, many rules and rituals about dirt focus on what goes into and what comes out of the body. In this way, the body is a microcosm of society, and is connected to the logic of social organization. For example, in the Hindu caste system, bodily excretions such as feces are considered polluting, so lower castes handle such excretions while the higher castes do not touch it. These rules about dirt and pollution therefore order a social hierarchy. Additionally, Douglas notes that cleaning rituals and rules about cleanliness tend to be far more extensive for women than men; since women can give birth, they are seen as entry points, not only for semen but for the group as a whole. ‘Pollution’ of their bodies results in ingress of outsiders into the group, threatening social boundaries.

We can use Douglas’s ideas about dirt and purity to analyze the image above. Since blood exits the body during menstruation, it is a process during which the margins of the body are highlighted, and thus may threaten social boundaries. Therefore, it reflects social organization, especially the role and construction of gender in society. In many cases, starting to menstruate is seen as a girl’s transition into womanhood, and there are common practices associated with this transition. Many of my friends were explicitly welcomed into adulthood, whether with excitement or solemnity, by their mothers when they first got their periods. First menstruation functions as a ritual that affirms gendered organization and constructs what womanhood means. In the image, we see a mother and daughter, emphasizing that menstruation is a gendered experience that mothers, as women, understand and will lead their daughters through. The mother’s knowing expression and comforting hand indicate this guidance, and implies that her daughter will one day do the same thing. The white sheets and pillows are pristine, a reminder of the array of products marketed to women that are meant to keep periods invisible and contained. There is an expectation that period blood is kept out of sight, and that going through menstruation is a key part of being a woman. Sacrifice, too, is constructed as foundational to womanhood in a sense: the pain of menstruation as a sacrifice for bearing children and keeping the group alive. Pain is present in the image above, in the hands settled on the daughter's stomach as well as in her expression. Douglas might argue that these rules and rituals order the gender organization that we see in society, rather than stemming from that organization. Bodies that defy this collective affirmation of gender – trans men and women, for example – become matter out of place, and are punished and pressured to conform.

References:
Chaney, Patricia. 2018. “Explaining Changing Hormones During Periods: The Science of PMS.” GE HealthCare, December 25. Retrieved April 3, 2024 (https://www.volusonclub.net/empowered-womens-health/explaining-changing-hormones-during-periods-the-science-of-pms/).
 

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Philadelphia, PA: Routledge.