Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You

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Here’s a nice change of pace—menstruation as magical powers! Okay, they aren’t exactly magic, but Wild Power offers ideas about how menstruation aligns with energy to empower women. In addition to teaching the ladies how to harness and use this innate power, it also guides us to a new approach to menopause. Basically, this book redefines everything we may think about menstruation. Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology by Sharra Vostral Then, in my sophomore year in college, I was double majoring in biological anthropology and women’s studies. Instead of large lectures, I had to take some small group seminars and there was one called ‘reproductive ecology.’ I didn’t know what that was, but the class turned out to be about hormones and menstrual cycles and it was with Susan Lipson. It was this realization that I could actually make this thing—that people had said was gross or weird but felt special to me—my life’s work. I could study it in a scholarly way. That was pretty cool. If you find yourself at school without a pad or tampon, ask a teacher or the school nurse for some. How long will my first period last? I teach a general education course called ‘humanizing science.’ It’s a social science course designed for science majors. For the last class of the semester, I assigned two readings that were trying to expose students to a justice-minded way of thinking about the world, to ethics, to understanding the history of science and medicine and the incentive structures and problems of science so they can go and produce a different way of doing science. That’s my big dream. Respond to questions or opportunities as they arise and do not be embarrassed. Periods are natural. Talking about periods

Studying variation helps us understand how the environment leads to bodies developing adaptations, and how that creates change over time. So what I love about a biological anthropology approach to periods, for instance, is that we don’t start from a clinical perspective of asking questions around ‘What counts as healthy?’ ‘What counts as diseased?’ Instead, we ask, ‘What’s the full variation of what it means to experience or have a period? And how does that help us inform and understand evolutionary biology?’ Margaret is funny and real, and her thoughts and feelings are oh-so-relatable—you’ll feel like she’s talking right to you, sharing her secrets with a friend. Except that in some ways there is. A chapter that we ended up pulling from the book, but I wrote as a feature for American Scientist last year, was about pollution and disposable products for menstruation. The way we tend to think is, ‘How can we manage periods to make them invisible so we can go exist in the world?’ We tend to prioritize, ‘What are the most effective products that sop up my period blood and keep it from being visible to other people?’ In doing so, we are producing more and more disposable products that are harmful to the planet. First, there's no shame. Afraid of nothing. Let's learn more about menstrual equality and spread the word to other people. There are about half of people who get their period, and it's the most basic bodily function, so it shouldn't be kept a secret any more. A primer on the menstrual movement and everything you need to know about periods is one of these books. It also talks about the political activism of the world, how you can make your period work for you, and essays and a memoir about not-so-great periods. Let's get to it now. Important Books About Periods Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement by Nadya Okamoto, illustrated by Rebecca Elfast

International

The main one is Kindred by Octavia Butler and then Stigmata by Phyllis Alesia Perry. She also does some work analyzing N.K. Jemisin, Shawntelle Madison and Nalo Hopkinson. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any N.K. Jemisin or Nalo Hopkinson but they’re amazing. Chris Bobel is a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. I’m a huge fan (as I am of everybody on this list!). Bobel has written many books about periods and has long had a really interesting scholarly approach to them. In this particular book, she does what she calls an invested critique of the menstrual hygiene management movement. In particular, the international movement where it’s mostly white Westerners, white women, going into other countries with their imperial feminist thoughts and saying, ‘We know what’s best for you. It’s more period products or more attention to sanitation conditions (or whatever).’ But none of them can believe Margaret doesn’t have religion, and that she isn’t going to the Y or the Jewish Community Center. What they don’t know is Margaret has her own very special relationship with God. She can talk to God about everything—family, friends, even Moose Freed, her secret crush. No, but there is a connection to health, to medicine. What moves me about this book is the incredible detail, compassion and attention that Dr. Reagan puts on all these parents who said, ‘No, my kid deserves something better. And I deserve something better because I don’t want this to happen again.’ Mothers were saying, ‘Nobody is protecting me. I’m going to get rubella and my kid is going to die.’

Periods are no longer secret little taboos. A big, loud political issue is what Jennifer Weiss-Wolf talks about. She gives us a lot of history and culture from around the world, along with a lot of ideas for activism that will get your blood pumping. Periods Gone Public is a must-read for any feminist who wants to make the world a better place for women. Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You by Maisie HillAlma Gottlieb is an emeritus professor from my university and my office at work is her old office. She gave me a copy of this book just as I was about to start writing. It’s a cultural anthropology of menstruation. It’s one of the first books that said, ‘Instead of universalizing the idea that all humans have menstrual stigma, let’s actually take a closer look at all of these different groups.’ To make your child feel secure and enthusiastic about this stage, she needs the correct information. As a parent, you must provide a secure environment for your child to feel safe approaching you with her questions about puberty. And a suitable place for you to start would be selecting the right books on the topic. There are ways of covering up stains until you're able to change your clothes, such as tying a sweatshirt around your waist. Keep a spare pair of pants and tights at school or in your bag. Should I use pads, tampons, menstrual cups or period underwear? As usual, Sophie faces challenges and challengers with determination and resourcefulness. With the same down-to-earth, realistic, humorous take on friendships and family relationships praised in the three previous Sophie Hartley books, this fourth story brings the indomitable Sophie a step closer to growing up without compromising her sense of herself.

Sophie Hartley, age ten, does not want to be a teenager. She vows she’ll never be like her older sister, Nora, who has tantrums about her hair andalmost everything else.Her older brother Thad is preoccupied with his girlfriend of the moment and doesn’t seem to like the family anymore. No, Sophie likes being who she is right now, helping out at home, doing art projects, and hanging out with her two best friends. You can use TV ads for tampons, or buying sanitary towels at the supermarket, for example, to start the conversation about periods. Or simply ask your daughter what she already knows and go from there.Side Note That I Find Hysterical: When finding the cover image for Under Wraps, the list of You May Also Like To Read suggestions included a bunch of books about periods and ended with Nicholas Sparks’s A Walk To Remember.Draw your own conclusions here. Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life by Darcey Steinke

Gender identity has nothing to do with menstruation and it can be helpful to use language such as ‘people who menstruate’. This is up to you. Tampons, menstrual cups, disposable or reusable pads (towels) and period underwear are safe and suitable if you've just started your period. You might want to use pads for your very first period as tampons and cups can take some getting used to. It might be worth experimenting until you find the product that suits you best. Can a tampon get lost inside me? You may be referred to a specialist (usually a gynaecologist – a specialist in women's health) to find out what's causing your delayed periods and discuss any treatments that might help. How do I get ready for my first period?

Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working For You by Maisie Hill

Here are a few books on periods that I would recommend if you are looking to learn more than the basics you learned 10 (or more) years ago at school. Or if you are ready to educate some other young ladies about periods. I will certainly be sharing what I’ve learned with my daughter. This book is an incredible ‘all-rounder’, covering cycle phases, hormones, traditions, breaking taboos, period pain remedies and gut health. Author Le’Nise Brothers is a nutritionist, yoga teacher and women’s health and hormone specialist and this is her first book. Whether you’re a seasoned menstruator, a young menstruator, or a parent of a soon-to-be menstruator, you need books about periods to help guide you through the whole bloody (and absolutely normal!) process, physically and emotionally. We’ve got you covered. The future is going to be messy. The future is going to include real bodies. How are we going to manage that? We can’t just all sit in a cubicle and sip Soylent all day, as much as some tech bro in Silicon Valley might want that. I’m a biological anthropologist, which means the foundation I’m coming from is human evolutionary biology. That is the lens through which we seek to understand people. Over the years, bioanth has really moved away from just straight up studying human evolution and questions like ‘Why did we evolve big brains?’ There’s definitely a whole line of paleoanthropology that does that. But there are now a significant number of us within bioanth whose research questions focus on trying to understand the wide range of human biological variation.