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A Visit From Auntie

© Sharon K. West

Featured website for this article is the Museum of Menstruation. Special thanks goes to Harry Finley for allowing me to glean information from his site for use throughout my article. Every woman should make a pilgrimage to the Museum of Menstruation.

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What could be more bizarre and mysterious than a person who bleeds on average every 28 days and does not die? That one ability put women in a whole different category since the beginning of time. Let us look at the history of how women dealt with their menstrual cycles through the ages.

The embarrassment surrounding menstruation developed many code phrases to refer to it. You may have heard your grandmother tell someone about "a visit from auntie" or the time she was "on the rag." "Falling off the roof" and "riding the white horse" are examples of other slang phrases.

According to The Red Spot, "only humans, apes and some monkeys menstruate. Mammals like dogs and cats sometimes bleed a little when they are in heat, which is when they ovulate and mate, but they do not have menstrual cycles."

On average, a woman loses about four tablespoons of blood each month. To deal with the mess of it, women used grass, sponges, cotton wads and other absorbent materials to catch the blood. What is hard for us to imagine, however, is that the custom of some in history was to bleed into their clothing with nothing to catch it. In earlier times, open-crotch undergarments allowed secretions to pass away from the body and provided ventilation. It was not all "lavender and lace" under those long skirts! Today's "crotched" underwear is a fairly modern invention.

Nothing is written about the practices of American pioneer women other than hints about it in diaries where dark colors were recommended for wearing. Therefore, pioneer women may have bled into their clothing as well since they would have done the same as women in their homelands. In some cultures, women still bleed into their clothing today.

Records indicate that historically, menstruating women left a trail of blood. Factories where women worked used rushes on the floor to catch it. One might imagine that the odor was terrific, but during the 18th century at least, menstrual odor was considered seductive. At certain times in history, odor was evidence of a young girl's ability to have children. At other times, it spoke of a woman's infertility.

When considering the average woman in early history, poor nutrition, the lack of birth control, and the fact women breastfed their children, make it entirely possible that she did not menstruate very many times during her life, if at all. We must remember that the norm was not even to live until menopause.

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