Women are about the be bombarded with DTC ads for Lybrel:
“So what’s a poor company to do?” Houppert writes, adding, “Re-conceptualize menstruation as a disease in need of treatment.” She writes, “And what’s a poor menstruating woman to do? Get cranky with the prophets who offer to cure us of menstruation; who minimize the complex interplay of hormones and their many roles in our bodies; who gloss over the still unknown long-term effects of menstrual suppression; who promise that cycle-free women are better lovers, mothers, workers. Or just don’t buy” the pills.
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{ 8 comments }
I got a bit too thin (all better, now) and my periods stopped for about 6 months as I gradually got up to a healthier weight.
I found this the best aspect of being too thin. It was WONDERFUL. I can’t say with enough emphasis how wonderful it was.
My periods are, and have been always, enormously inconvenient, expensive, messy, uncomfortable, mood-deranging, energy-sapping, event-wrecking drags.
I didn’t know how much they annoyed me, until they stopped.
In latter years I was unable to leave the house for the first day or so, though that did improve when I discovered menstrual cups. A non-menopause related period fee existence is somethign worth the risks, as far as I’m concerned.
Especially since women were not really meant to menstruate every month of their reproductive years…we were meant to be pregnant or lactating to the point of menstrual suppression, for the bulk of those years. HOW is this worse than using BCP’s, with that silly fake period in between packs.
Birth control pills aren’t natural, either. Few feminists would rail that controlling ovulation is a travesty and turning ovulation into a “disease”.
I got a bit too thin (all better, now) and my periods stopped for about 6 months as I gradually got up to a healthier weight.
I found this the best aspect of being too thin. It was WONDERFUL. I can’t say with enough emphasis how wonderful it was.
Let’s see.. 6 months beeing too thin to menstruate = 6 months without adequate estrogen = 6 months of bone loss. Real smart.
At least with the pill you are getting enough hormones.
Boy , talk about missing the point. Nice how you assume the weight loss was intentional.
A focus on high nutrition and weight-bearing excercise is the best I can do to mitigate that unfortunate episode and any damage to bones.
that negates nothing about the experience of having no period.
I think the objections must stem less from worries about the BCP’s, than women feeling “obligated” to suppress menstruation. Perhaps this fear is not meritless. Women did indeed come to feel “obligated” to artificially control their fertility after the advent of birth control pills, there has been a sea change in expectations about whether children are a naturally anticipated result of sexual activity.
When women CAN reliably and safely suppress mensturation, will they be expected to? Whal lit be demanded of them? Will women be punished for having down time the way they do now during menstruation?
.
10:27, goodness, to hear you drone on you would think you were the only woman in the history of human beings to ever have periods. I think we have all had them and many times they are not pleasant but I think it’s called nature. I guess some of us just deal with them better than other’s…:)
Oh good grief.
Glad you handle your periods like a man.
FWIW, they might get worse. And even if they don’t, not all menstruating women are created equal.
I always took them as a fact of life. You know, you deal. You do what you have to do. Only when I didn’t have to do it, it was GREAT.
BCP’s already change a woman’s menstrual patterns, AGAINST NATURE, god forbid, and the fuss over stopping the fake period they cause strikes me as the foolish whine.
I had no periods for 2 years because of Mirena, and I thought it was GREAT. I could handle my periods, but it’s so much better when I don’t have to. If someone feels that not having periods is unnatural – don’t go for the pills, Mirena, or whatever method you’re using to get rid of them. But there are women who would take advantage of it. And I also don’t get the logic behind all the bitching about the new pills. It’s not like what you had with old pills was your real period – why get concerned about unnatural hormones in your body now? Where they any more natural 5-10 years ago?
“Glad you handle your periods like a man.”
That is the most idiotic comment I have ever read on any blog.
Anony 10:13
It was a bit of a razz, wasn’t it…
But funny as hell.
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