University of Massachusetts professor Chris Bobel is the author of the soon to be released book New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation. In this two-part interview she unpacks periods and the activism, advertising and controversy that makes them so very personal and so very political.
How did you come to see menstruation as more than a personal matter?
A slogan menstrual activists use is 'We’re Making Bleedin' Everyone's Issue.' As women, we are expected to keep our periods hidden and silenced. We internalize this attitude, and police each other: Women learn to hate their bodies, seeing them through racism, ageism and sexism as problems to be fixed through constant 'improvements' - that too big nose, too-dark skin, too-narrow eyes, tiny breasts, fat butt. And now we can 'improve' the body even more - we can eliminate menstruation altogether with pills such as Lybrel and Seasonique.
I think our only hope of resisting these messages and slowing down if not stopping this body hating is to develop body literacy. But we don’t do this beyond encouraging girls to make their bodies thinner, harder, sexier. When girls (and later, women) lack this knowledge, they are vulnerable to exploitation, especially when it is cleverly packaged as 'liberation.'
No comments:
Post a Comment