Artifact 7 seeks to discuss and put into words both my girlfriend and my thoughts regarding female menstruation. It will elaborate on both today’s culture regarding menstruation and the issues that come up during menstruation.

I think that even here in America, female menstruation is viewed as being dirty and gross and so women choose to hide it in the presence of males. To me, it has always just been something that happens and something that indicates that you are healthy and definitely not something that should be shamed or hidden away necessarily. Honestly, I think it should be held in high regard, or at least higher than we do here in America. It’s an incredible thing that the body can do this and does this hundreds of times throughout a lifetime and yet we think it gross and foul because it’s bloody and smells poor at times. Just from what I’ve experienced with my girlfriend the past year I can definitely sympathize with the hassle it can be and the limitations it might put on you during a cycle. That all being said I still think it to be an incredible process and something that more people should be exposed to so that they can understand what is really going on and dispel this myth that it is gross and should be hidden.

My girlfriend has many of the same thoughts regarding this as I do, but this past week I skyped her and asked her to just talk to me about how she felt about menstruation, her experiences with it and her thoughts on the culture of it here in America. The first big thing she mentioned was the price of tampons and the luxury taxes that females experience, but males do not. To her it seemed absurd that tampons and the like are not deemed necessarily when all she’s ever heard all her life was that you must remain clean during your cycle and must do all you can do to hide it so that things go normally as they would, but that to get the things that would allow this she would have to pay significantly. She also voiced how uncomfortable getting her period had been throughout her life and again, to ease the discomfort, she would have to pay for birth control while men never seemed to really think about how much extra this could all be. Talking to her about this really opened my eyes to other aspects of the menstruation cycle that are not discussed as nearly as much as we both believe they should be.

We both agreed that the culture surrounding menstruation is the real problem here. We think young girls are scared to deal with their cycles because of the way we handle it. To change this it will definitely take a lot of work, but to start everyone needs to be informed and shown how important of a biological process it is and how with proper care and cleanliness it really could be a non-event, but instead we make it up to be this much bigger deal than it is and refuse to talk about it.

Cadet Jonathan Verhoff

VMI Class of 2017

BI218X

HR: Asked girlfriend for her thoughts on the menstruation process and culture surrounding it